Cancun climate change deal
Climate change talks in Mexico reached a deal, including a fund to help developing countries but the finer details have still to be agreed on. Emma Blee writes.
Expectations were low for the Mexico climate change talks but it seems considerable progress was made.
More than 190 countries gathered in Cancun at the end of November for two weeks of talks under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre de Brún attended the negotiations as the GUE/NGL group’s climate change spokeswoman and said that while “building blocks and a work programme were put in place”, there is still a lot of work to be done.
An agreement was made to keep the global temperature rise below 2°C. While this is not yet legally binding, it has been dubbed as a “step forward” as it commits all countries to cutting emissions for the first time under the UN framework.
One of the most positive outcomes of the talks was that countries have now agreed to set up a £60 billion per annum ‘Green Climate Fund’. Beginning in 2020, it will help poorer countries adapt to climate change. It could also help developing countries like India to develop renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Another encouraging step was the agreement of a forestry deal. Under a new fund, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, poor nations will be paid not to cut down trees.
At the beginning of the talks Japan reufused to sign up to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol but was eventually persuaded to compromise. While most countries were in support of the deal, Bolivia claimed it was too weak to keep temperature rise below 2°C. The country threatened to keep fighting within the UN process for a stronger deal.
Not ideal
De Brún acknowledged that while the talks provided a base to work from, the outcome is “not ideal and very far from where we need to be”.
She told agendaNi: “There’s no doubt whatsoever that the most difficult decisions were put off. It would not have been possible to come to a deal otherwise.” However, she said that there was a real danger that “we could have been left with what only came out of Copenhagen” and a deal that was not within the UN framework. For that reason she sees the Cancun agreement as significant progress and believes it shows “the types of decisions we need to take”.
She does recognise that many details still have to be worked out with staging posts set in February, March and May so that delegates will come back and report with information and “put flesh to the bones” of the proposals.
Good work was done on establishing framework to help developing nations, she remarked: “This was one of the most positive things to come out of the talks but some of the details still need to be worked out.” The Green Climate Fund should help developing countries to enhance their economy “without following the dirty development path we followed”, she said. Instead these countries should be developed in a sustainable way.
The forestry deal was another major achievement but is in the early stages of development: “Throughout the talks when we were getting various briefings about what was happening in other working groups, it was clear that the forestry deal moved forward quite early on. The actual decision about how the fund will be mobilised in developing countries is still being worked on.”
The way forward
Governments should step up to the challenge now to ensure an ambitious climate deal in 2012, states de Brún. “I think everyone that I spoke to, whether it was people from developing countries or businesses, they all said they need certainty about the way forward.”
She would like to see “ambitious legislation put in place” with targets on emissions, clarity on financing and an outline of resources and methods of how it would be dispersed. Clarity on what actions developing countries will take is also important.
“The one thing that I think is important to say is that while we are moving forward on the global scale, each and every country needs to move forward with its own domestic actions,” said the Sinn Féin MEP.
A “stronger campaign” and raising awareness would help “the penny drop” as to how important the Green New Deal is for Northern Ireland. But the devolved government also needs to look at local climate legislation. The Irish Government needs to push through its Climate Bill and energy efficiency targets need to be made legally binding at EU level.
A 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is vital to ensure competitiveness at EU level. De Brún asks: “If we can’t compete with countries like China now, how will we ever compete with a low-carbon economy?”
She adds: “We can be the ones making, selling and helping our economy move. Or we can sit back and let everyone else pass us by and wait for the legally binding targets to hit and buy in from everybody else.”
Since the talks have built up a positive momentum, de Brún is now hopeful that the South African meeting, which will take place in Durban from 28 November to 9 December 2011, will result in an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
Party reaction
Alliance
Chris Lyttle said the talks delivered a “substantial and comprehensive deal”. All political leaders should be more ambitious when tackling climate change and “we need to constantly re-evaluate our strategies and push for reforms,” he said.
Green
While the party welcomed the deal, Brian Wilson said “saving the planet will still take some time – and unfortunately we do not have time on our side”. He added that the talks in South Africa next year must produce a “strong and binding international deal on reducing emissions and limiting global warming”.
SDLP
John Dallat remarked that the conference “did not bring material progress because the big economic players would not sign up”. After the failure of last year’s Copenhagen talks “simply maintaining the international machinery of climate control must be counted as a diplomatic success”.
UUP
The party saw the talks as a positive step. Danny Kinahan described the described the deal as “a welcome refocusing by the international community to tackling climate change”. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and diversifying energy production is in our “national and regional interests and must be pursued with vigour,” he said.
The DUP declined to comment.
