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Complex implications of the Cancun climate conference.

2010; Sameeksha Trust; Volume: 45; Issue: 52 Linguagem: Inglês

0012-9976

M. Khor,

Climate Change Policy and Economics

When the dust settles after the Cancun climate change conference of the United Nations, a careful analysis will find that the adoption of the “Cancun Agreements” may have given the multilateral climate system a shot in the arm, but that the meeting also failed to save the planet from climate change and helped pass the burden of climate mitigation onto developing countries. Instead of being strengthened, the international climate regime was weakened by the now serious threat to close the legally binding and top-down Kyoto Protocol system and to replace it with a voluntary pledge system. The 2010 climate conference of the UN Framework Convention on C limate Change (UNFCCC) which took place in Cancun (Mexico) between 29 Nove mber and 11 December was complex in process and content, and in both aspects it will have an importance and a number of ramifications that will take s everal years to unfold. In substance, the conference outcome has set in train a process that will probably lead to very significant changes in the international climate regime. In particular, it may have laid the final groundwork for the demise of the Kyoto Protocol and thus of the crumbling of the foundation of the architecture agreed to in the climate conference of Bali in December 2007 which launched the Bali Road Map. In general, it has weakened in operational terms the critical principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities by blurring the careful distinctions between developed and developing countries in their respective and qualitatively different types and levels of commitment and responsibilities, especially in mitigation or the efforts to combat the effects of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In terms of process, the Cancun conference saw the use of a combination of methods of work and decision-making that are not normally used in United Nations conferences. It may have set a precedent of sorts for a UN meeting by using World Trade Organisation (WTO)-style methods and processes to reach an outcome. Moreover, in the final sessions, the chair of the conference gavelled through the key decision documents despite the strong objection of one country, in so doing stating that this was in line with the consensus principle. In fact at the UN as well as at the WTO, c onsensus is taken to mean that no m ember present formally objects to the decision at hand. The Cancun conference was in fact a combination of six different meetings of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol. The most important of these was the Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC, the Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), and the sessions of the two ad hoc working groups on long-term cooperative action (AWG-LCA) and on the further commitments of Annex I parties in the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). The AWG-KP had been formed in 2005 to negotiate the new emission-reduction goals of those developed countries that are parties to the Kyoto Protocol (all are, except the United States), since the first commitment period ends in 2012, and the second period is scheduled to start in 2013. The AWG-LCA was formed at the Bali conference in 2007, to follow up on the Bali Action Plan whose aim is to fully implement the Convention’s objectives, through enhanced actions in mitigation, adaptation, transfers of finance and technology to developing countries and a shared vision including on a long-term goal for global emission reduction.