Latest update November 21st, 2024 1:00 AM
Mexico tries to prevent hijack of UN climate talks
… seeks to bar secret talks
By Neil Marks in Cancun, Mexico
With the start of the high-level segment of the UN climate talks today, the ghost of the final day’s of last year’s summit stalks Cancun, but the Mexican Presidency is seeking to prevent that.
“There will be no separate or parallel Ministerial process, no selective segmentation of issues, and no duplication of negotiations,” said Patricia Espinosa, President of the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun.
Andrew Bishop is Guyana’s chief negotiator at the UN climate talks
Efforts by negotiators to reach a legally binding agreement to prevent global warming and hence other extreme weather events, such as rising sea levels and flooding, were quashed when US President Barack Obama and other big-nation leaders hijacked the process and came out with a non-binding “Copenhagen Accord” last year. Mexico doesn’t want the same to happen in Cancun.
“We believe that after much hard work by all, current conditions should allow –indeed must allow– for the reaching of understandings. This is in no small measure due to a commitment by all to transparency and inclusiveness, principles that the Mexican Presidency will continue to honor throughout,” added Espinosa.
Negotiators spent last week working out technical details in the two negotiating tracts to hand to environment ministers who bring political clout to the negotiations.
Andrew Bishop has been Guyana’s lead negotiator at these talks. President Bharrat Jagdeo is expected to arrive in Cancun this week to join the tortuous UN climate talks and press the case that any “balanced” outcome must include a final decision on REDD, the idea that rich countries should pay poor countries to keep the forests standing.
“Here and now, it’s time for all of us to push and push hard for full incorporation of REDD+ into a long-term international climate change agreement,” said Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, President of Mexico.
“While most of us still hope for an agreement on REDD this week, regardless of what happens in the negotiations, voluntary commitments and initiatives have a momentum of their own,” said Frances Seymour, Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
But leading Non-Governmental Organisation, Greenpeace, offers a different view of what has happened to the REDD negotiations.
“On REDD we are sliding backwards. The Chair’s new REDD text leaves the door open for risky, small-scale offset projects that could threaten forests and our climate. Ministers must re-insert the safeguards and principles that ensure REDD is effective, rather than selling tropical forests off to the highest bidder,” said Greenpeace.
The Mexican Presidency has been keen on pointing out that the beginning of the high-level segment would see ministers contributing to the work, and not “draft compromise language.”
“Ministers will not convene informal sessions of any sort, but will instead approach every delegation they believe ought to be consulted at each specific moment and remain accessible to all,” said Espinosa.
The Mexican presidency has grouped negotiators in pairs, one from a developing country and one from a developed country, to tackle specific issues: Sweden and Grenada would work on shared vision; Spain and Algeria on adaptation; Australia and Bangladesh on finance, technology and capacity building; New Zealand and Indonesia on mitigation; and the United Kingdom and Brazil on items under the Kyoto Protocol.
Other ministers, among them those from Ecuador, Singapore, Norway and Switzerland could support on other specific issues as they arise.
“One week into the process, the conditions are in place to reach a broad and balanced package of decisions that leads to an era of increasingly effective global action on climate change,” said Espinosa.
“I believe we can complete the package, or at the very least to make significant advances, before the opening of the high-level segment on Tuesday afternoon.”
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