From Copenhagen to Cancun - has anything really changed?

After two long and dispiriting weeks, the Cancun climate talks drew to a close in the early hours of Saturday morning. Following the catastrophic outcome in Copenhagen, where an inadequate document was forced onto the supposedly open and democratic UN process in the final hours by a handful of (mainly rich) countries at the last moment, expectations for the Cancun meeting were always low.

So what did this supposed “deal”, that lead some to calls of “we can can can in Cancun” as the talks drew to a close, actually produce? What we have essentially ended up with is a list of non binding promises, that leave the World Bank, one of the world’s most discredited and undemocratic institutions, that even last year beat its own records on climate wrecking fossil fuel lending, as the trustee of a much heralded new ‘Green Climate Fund’. This Fund, as one person said, looks like a great Christmas present – until you realise the box is empty because rich countries are failing to follow through on their comitments. Any money the World Bank holds will simply be reinvested into the most profitable areas, which are all too often, fossil fuel projects.

Meanwhile the pledged emissions cuts, which will lead to  4 degree global temperature rise at best, sit outside the only legally binding framework on emissions cuts that currently exists. This means that no one is obliged to actually follow through with them. At the same time, this leaves the Kyoto Protocol, the only existing legally binding framework on cutting emissions, to be hung out and left to die. Far from a ‘deal’ that has justice, or even science, at its heart; this supposed ‘deal’ is little more than a betrayal of the people who are already being impacted by the horrors of a changing climate they played no part in causing.

The process in Cancun, it seemed, also institutionalised everything that was bad about Copenhagen. Even before the talks began, rumours of dirty tactics that sidelined the process were abound, with talk of a new ‘chair’s text’ that came from nowhere and completely disregarded any progress that had been painstakingly made since Copenhagen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this text excluded the more progressive outcomes of the Cochabamba ‘People’s Accord’, a document representing the views of 35,000 representatives of social movements, scientists, and other members of civil society. More surprisingly the text also omitted both the outcomes of the last meeting of official negotiators at the inter-session meeting in Bonn in August, as well as the pre-talks in Tianjin, China in October. The constant reframing of the talks outside of the process showed how yet again, the UN process is being sidelined.

The politics at play in Cancun seem more like children in a playground than countries serious about averting a climate crisis. First, the Mexican government handpicked only 25 heads of state, like players in a lunchtime football game. Most refused the invite.

In yet another bold move from the Bolivian government, Evo Morales, one of the champions of a strong just deal amongst the developing country groupings, decided to come to the party without having an invite, breaking the usual diplomatic protocols. Before the talks had even started, the United States had already threatened they would walk out if they didn’t get their own way, like a spoilt child. Japan stated that they didn’t not want to sign a new commitment period under their native Kyoto Protocol. Russia said that if Japan didn’t agree to the second commitment period then neither would they. So there.

In spite of strong pressure from the US, some developing countries and campaigners attempted to cling to the ‘two track’ system, determined to keep the inadequate Kyoto Protocol, that they are aware is riddled with carbon trading loopholes. Why? Because they knew that this was the only legally binding document on emissions cuts which included the need for developing countries to take the lead in cutting emissions, on the table. Basically, it was the best hope of reaching a binding agreement for rich country cuts – which, let’s not forget, is something all countries agreed when they signed up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Another nail in the coffin has been the Wikileaks revelations that rich countries are using climate finance as a bribe to get developing countries to agree to weak targets for reducing carbon emissions. Under the UNFCCC it is clear that climate finance is not intended as a form of aid. Moreover, it must been seen as compensation for the damage caused by the emissions that rich countries have produced. Continued pressure by rich countries for funds to be channelled through the World Bank, an institution deeply mistrusted by developing countries due to it undemocratic structure, its history of damaging projects, and its role as a major financer for fossil fuel based climate destroying development, has been another way rich countries have knowingly created a deeper divide in the negotiations.   (Read more about a campaign that WDM co-launched with allies from around the world during the talks on www.worldbankoutofclimate.org).

It seems to me Cancun’s main success has been to lower expectations to the point where the delegates feel so little hope and expectation that people are compelled to celebrate a document that is, at best, little more than a list of hollow promises that countries have no legal obligation to fulfil. From where I’m standing, this is hardly a reason to be cheerful in the face of a climate crisis that is already killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.