Cancun Climate Negotiation | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Cancun Climate Negotiation | Center for Strategic and International Studies

By Sarah O. Ladislaw Dec 15, 2010

(I have enjoyed many of CSIS's talks on the China-in-Africa discussions from last year. This one seems to be fairly comprehensive. But for better understanding I would suggest you skip through the Copenhagen assessment as well. It's really interesting to note the changes, development and "progresses" taking shape between these big meetings. Again the whole climate change politics and policy extravaganza is a constantly and intriguingly evolving discourse as our understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of our climate and many aspects of our human civilizations)

For the last two weeks international climate negotiators met in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). After last year’s near-catastrophe in Copenhagen (see our assessment of the Copenhagen talks), countries spent the better part of the past year tamping down expectations for this year’s round of negotiations. Instead of shooting for the completion of a legally binding agreement, the negotiators focused on making incremental progress on some of the foundational elements of a new regime while sidestepping the issue of whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol and avoiding a more serious discussion about the diminishing likelihood that the international community will be able to reach its collective climate goals.

What agreements were reached in Cancun?

The climate talks in Cancun successfully “anchored” agreements reached last year in the formal negotiating progress and filled out some of the details in each major area. Last year, the negotiators reached an eleventh-hour political agreement referred to as the Copenhagen Accord. For many developed economies, chief among them the United States, this agreement is meant to serve as the foundation for a new global agreement because it solves some of the deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol (namely, it includes emissions reduction pledges and transparency provisions for all major economies, not just the traditional developed countries). The agreement is broadly supported among the parties but was never formally adopted by the entire group. Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, described the outcome of the Cancun negotiations as “approving and elaborating” on the Copenhagen Accord. This characterization can be derived from the fact that all the key elements of the Copenhagen Accord (i.e., emissions reductions, transparency, financing, technology sharing, forestry and land use, and adaptation) were included in the Cancun agreement. Moreover, while the Copenhagen Accord focused on high-level principles and agreements on each of those issues, the agreement in Cancun begins to set down some substantive detail about how each will be carried out (see the chart below for a partial summary of how the Cancun agreement built upon the major pillars of the Copenhagen Accord).

Does this agreement signify progress or more of the same?

For those paying close attention to the climate negotiation process, the progress made in Cancun is tangible and significant. It solidifies the core achievement from the Copenhagen Accord: all major developed and developing economies are willing to take action and be held to some level of accountability for emissions reductions. This is a significant departure from the world of the Kyoto Protocol and engenders some level of momentum for near-term action on emissions reduction activity.

In other ways, the outcome revealed that the negotiations have become a process that is waiting for the stars to realign before attempting to make any big breakthroughs or address some of the core underlying problems. The decision not to take on major issues seems to be strategic and pragmatic. The negotiators purposely did not take on thorny issues about increasing emissions reduction pledges (which are widely viewed as inadequate for reaching the agreed-upon target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) or ensuring greater levels of financing for developing country mitigation and adaptation efforts. From a practical standpoint, negotiators recognized that none of the parties were in a position to strengthen emissions or financial pledges due to domestic political and financial constraints, so instead, negotiators focused on things they could accomplish in order to facilitate as much real action on the suite of measures as possible.

Where do the negotiations go from here?

The next round of formal negotiations (there will be preparatory negotiations throughout the course of 2011) will take place in Durban, South Africa, at the end of next year. Many analysts have rightly noted that it be will difficult for the negotiators to make the same type of “incremental progress” next year and avoid some of the underlying disagreements and core weaknesses of the current regime. One example of this is the question of whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol for another commitment period. During the negotiations in Cancun, Japan and several other countries with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol stated that they would not sign on to a second commitment period. All of this is, in some way, political theater. The idea that major developed economies would continue to be part of a legally binding agreement that does not somehow bring in the other major emitters has been a nonstarter for developed country signatories of the Kyoto Protocol for quite some time. However, the Kyoto Protocol is a critically important document for developing countries as it enshrines many of the core principles and structures that they view as the necessary foundation for any and all future action. The agreement reached in Cancun simply puts off a decision about whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol until next year (though it is hard to see how parties will be any closer to an agreement 12 months hence). The underlying strategy here is to build up a “replacement” for the Kyoto Protocol—an agreement that includes all the core principles that the developing world wants to see (e.g., common but differentiated standards, financing for mitigation and adaptation measures, etc.) but breaks down some of the barriers between developed and developing country action that the developed world simply cannot accept. Over time, if parties became more confident in a new agreement, the Kyoto Protocol will seem less important and hopefully fade away (because nobody ever kills these types of agreements). It is doubtful, however, that this type of confidence will be achieved before the deadline for extension comes up.

Perhaps more importantly, the international community seemed reluctant to accept that given current trajectories, the prospect of reaching their stated emissions reduction goals is increasingly unlikely. Most negotiators openly recognize that the world is not on course to effectively limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. This will become increasingly evident as more time passes, especially if major emitters like the United States are not able to make tangible and meaningful progress on emissions reductions. At some point individual countries as well as the global community will have to accept this new reality and come to grips with what it means for our collective action approach.

Progression from Copenhagen Accord to Cancun Outcome (not intended to be comprehensive)
Pillars of a “Balanced Package”	Copenhagen Accord	Cancun Outcome
Emissions reduction pledges	Developed country targets and developing country actions (invited countries to submit targets and actions)	Includes developed country targets and developing country actions as part of the decision (so-called anchoring of pledges)
Transparency	Developed country monitoring, reporting, and verification. Developing country national communication with domestic monitoring review and verification subject to international consultation	Adds detail to the content, frequency, and review of emissions reduction and financial pledges for developed, major developing, and lesser-developed economies Establishes details of the international consultation and analysis process for major developing countries
Financing	$30 billion of “new and additional” resources from developed countries between 2010–2012 Goal to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 High-Level Panel on finance goal Sought to establish Green Climate Fund	Locks in the amounts listed in the Copenhagen Accord for fast-start and long-term financing Establishes a Green Climate Fund as the operational entity for climate finance Establishes the World Bank as the interim trustee for the fund Establishes a Transitional Committee and Standing Committee within the COP with the goal of improving the facilitation of the fund
Technology	Sought to establish a new Technology Mechanism (expressed desire but could not execute outside the realm of the COP)	Establishes a Technology Mechanism to facilitate the technology development and transfer. Will include a Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Center (agreement describes the functions of both)
Reducing Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)	Agreed on the crucial role of REDD and the need to provide positive incentives to such action and enable mobilization of resources from developed countries	Establish a process for developing countries to reduce emissions in the forest sector in such a way that could enable external financing for these efforts
Adaptation	Agreed that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable, and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity building to support adaptation in developing countries [Within financing section] Prioritized adaptation for the most vulnerable developing countries and stated that and that a balanced allocation of funding should go to mitigation and adaptation	Establishes Cancun Adaptation Framework to enhance adaptation action Establishes an Adaptation Committee to promote implementation of enhanced action Establishes a work program to study and address loss and damages associated with climate change

Sarah O. Ladislaw is a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Audio: Post-Cancun Update - What Happened in Cancun and Where do the Climate Negotiations go from Here?

With Johnathon Pershing by CSIS

From Copenhagen to Cancun, from “Chinese Medicine” to “Food Diplomacy”

Nov, 26, Friday Less than an hour to Los Angles, three days before Cancun, COP 16


While I was trying to feel comfortable for gaining a day flying a restless 11-hour journey westbound, a peek into someone else’ newspaper indeed injected me some comfort. On the back side of the front page, it was Lina’s interview by China Daily – “Climate sparks warm views,” by the journalist Sun Li who visited us at the Sunday team meeting two weeks ago.

The article started with Lina’s awe-inspiring trip to the Antarctic with the “2041 project” initiated by Robert Swan, and moved on to her “part-time career” as an environmental activist besides her Fortune 500 job. But of course the core of this article is Lina’s transition of leadership (from the policy team leader of COP 15 China Youth Delegation to the chief of the COP 16 delegation) and that of the whole China Youth COP delegation from Copenhagen to Cancun.

One year after, from a winter to a “summer”, are we coming back Stronger?

The transition of the delegation is by all means necessary and the efforts of maturing are recommendable. Last year the whole delegation was irradiant, yet on some level, flimsy—the first Chinese youth delegation ever to voice out on behalf of some 400 million youth at home, 40-sth strong in number, over ten people receiving educations overseas. We symbolized China’s hope. Yet very unprepared, many of the “delegates” had to “do their homework” to get familiar with the negotiation process on the spot after arrival in Copenhagen, much as they all cared about the environment and climate. Too large a team, and too many distractions during the two weeks, just to name a few.

This year, however, we learned our lesson. Lina volunteered to go through the intensive preparation process once again and even to take the lead as the chief coordinator of the less-than-20 team. So did Furong, Mengsi and myself decide to take the challenge one more time and improve upon our experiences. The new team was assembled in August officially, after rounds of applications, selections and interviews. The team had convened for around 20 times each weekend, not including the daily meeting during the Tianjin round of talks, studying technical materials, planning activities, receiving trainings from field experts, organizing internal debate, managing our social media outlets, sending out newsletter, etc. Like last year, most of the funding came almost during the last minutes. No one backed out. No one intended.

“The college students are not easy! They all had to fund-raise for themselves to go, unlike you (referring to other big NGOs). I visited them both in Copenhagen and Tianjin,” said Xie Zhenghua, the deputy director of the National Development and Reform Committee and the head of the official Chinese negotiation delegation, in a close-door meeting with NGO representatives in China on the 25th before departure. He had especially requested representatives from the Delegation and the China Youth Climate Action Network.

A hard decision. We did not plan any “high-profile” campaign activities this year such as the “Green China” and “Chinese medicine therapy to climate change” we staged last year. We thought we ought to think deeper and wider this time.

So instead of having one of our guys dressing like a Chinese “Daifu (doctor),” the team came up with the idea of a new carbon calculator with support from Zhejiang University’s “Qiushi Chao” club. This is a carbon calculator that tells you what 10 US dollars can do to offset your carbon footprint – how many trees can be planted and CO2 sequestrated per say – or how long a student in the country side can remain in school, or how many chickens could be brought into a rural household in China. It will be available on our official website and and introduced through a side event.

“I think of this idea after the Tianjin meeting,” vented Yina, the head of our policy team, “where I had heard enough of foreign participants saying that China was such a developed country when they had not set their foot in places no longer than an hour away from the conference place.” This is not to say that China has no responsibility of being diligent in reducing its emission but that it needs to take a smarter move for its own sustainable development and at the international negotiation stage, Yina explained.

Recognizing our hard-earned opportunity to fly half way around the world to Cancun to witness the “first scene,” we highlight our responsibility of transmitting back the most up-to-date development and dynamics of the negotiations, as well as personal interpretations and reflections from a youth angle at Cancun with our multi-media distribution channels (e.g. official website, blogs, partner online media, online social media, etc.) targeting domestic young audience. On top of that, an army of reinforcement of over 30 people (with one third stationed overseas) has been assembled back home to support the frontline in terms of translation, editing articles and multi-media materials and organizing domestic activities on college campuses.

On the other hand, we want to show the world what efforts the pioneering Chinese youth have made to educate our peers by releasing the China Youth Climate Action Report during Cancun. We are also open to discuss strategies and lessons from youth groups from around the world and eager to seek resources to bring back home to enhance the work of the domestic youth organizations and NGOs at large.

Another legacy from Copenhagen that the team decided not to let it deposit but to dig deeper, polish and perpetuate is the second China-U.S. Youth Climate Exchange at Cancun after Copenhagen. Unlike last year when only three out of the 40 of team were involved in organizing the workshops and other joint activities, this year the preparation had started in a month in advance followed by intensive rounds of skype meetings with the help of tools like google docs that contain our “progress reports.” We have a core organizing team of over ten Americans and Chinese from both sides, claiming “territories” of work and serving as bottom-liners and facilitators of specific projects such as two workshops, focal groups, shared actions, and “food diplomacy” – a potluck party where the Americans have pledged to make pumpkin cheesecake and the Chinese to do the “Sichuan hotpot.”

The primary goals of the collaboration between young people from the two largest emitters are to educate themselves and build their own capacity and those of their peers to influence the policy-making at high level. Holly Chang, the CEO and founder of GoldenBridges and someone who has worked a facilitator of meetings between American and Chinese for three years, was again very instrumental in helping set up the framework and SMART goals of our collaboration. For us youth we recognize that we have our strengths and opportunities; we believe in alternatives and want to approach the issue our own way and potentially set up examples for the adults– such as, getting to know what our dorms each look like and our pet peeves before we go on to discuss CO2 and wind turbines. Last Monday, during the tele-conference organized by SustainUS to announce the youth participating strategies at Cancun, the exchange was announced for the first time. Later a story was published by SolveClimate and picked up by Reuters. "We hope to strengthen trust between our countries by growing our own trust. We hope ... to show the world in a more visible way that China and the U.S. are working together now."” quoted Jared Schy.

Thus we have designated a prioritized mission to be carried out before, during and after Cancun to reflect our core purposes of building our own capacity to make greater influence on the climate agenda for our own future and that of peers at home by engendering domestic interaction and international civic diplomacy. We need to grow substantially after Cancun and provide platforms for more to join the party.

From Copenhagen, to Nairobi, and to Cancun – an “L” journey that tells a big story

Now shift the wide angle to a close-up. Interestingly for myself, from Copenhagen to Cancun, it’s a year that has witnessed some organic and substantial growth – a transition of concentration from youth advocacy to implementation.

I lingered on in Copenhagen after COP 15, not because I enjoy Scandinavia’s gloomy winter and Denmark’s little mermaid, but because I had arranged to study in Denmark for an exchange semester prior to knowing I was going to COP 15. It was all worth-a-while. From both the courses and my involvement with Energy Crossroads Denmark Chapter – a youth organization focusing on energy issues -- I had the chance to learn more about the highly developed and efficient Danish energy supply system and its advancement in wind energy, and how to create value and opportunities for the society and youth themselves amidst the seemingly conflicting nature of climate change and development.

As if I had been traumatized by Europe’s coldest winter in 30 years and needed some intensive therapy, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) headquartered in the equatorial country of Kenya offered me an internship after I submitted my “medical case of illness.” From Copenhagen to Nairobi, life was finally awoken from a cold but fruitful dormancy.

Although while at the communication division of UNEP I was, for most of time, focusing on awareness-raising and advocacy -- promoting UNEP’s programs and activities to broader Chinese audience through various forms of social media. In the meanwhile, I went to the meetings of the African Youth Initiatives on Climate Change (AYICC) every Wednesday for one project. We had been pooling together resources for local youth groups to help implement energy-saving and clean cook stoves in Kenya – a mission I had promised my fellow Energy Crossroaders that I would carry on when I went there. And later together with several young Kenyans of my age, we founded the Rural Energy Enterprises Network (REEN), which is envisioned to become the network and incubator of youth enterprises for the sustainable promotion of appropriate energy technologies for rural households in Kenya and later across African under the umbrella of AYICC.

That said, yet I did not realize the significance of the establishment of REEN until a young journalist from Germany, who had just finished his travel to China to interview the young climate pioneers there, came to his stop in Africa to complete a book on global youth climate movement. It was Daniel who brought AYICCers and me two big pictures of this unprecedented global movement. His interviews of youth leaders from over 20-something countries told him that youth activists from many developing countries can give lots of inspirations and strategies to their counterparts in developed nations, not only just vice versa. And the creation of REEN, in his eyes, symbolized AYICC’s “high-profile” move that has been brewing for long to implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects from just pure climate change advocacy activities. Behind his “eyes,” I suddenly realized that I have consciously and unconsciously shifted my own focus of energy from singing the song to walking the talk.

But, is it a once-and-for-all transition? Is the climate movement on a personal level a point-A-to-point-B line? Is there anything more to it?

From Nairobi to Beijing

Then, do my decision to take a semester off school and returning to Beijing to help prepare the team signals my re-embracement of youth advocacy over implementation? I pondered over the question myself and could finally give out the ever-neutral “Yes-and-No” answer, which could potentially be a theory in the boiling as I’d like to see it that way.

It is nothing but a forward-rolling circle, like all matters in the universe, and I am only just one of the tides that are trying to raise more boats (to borrow Holly’s words), and the same for the whole team from a collective point of view.

Having my eyes wide-open at the 10-thousand-strong PowerShift09 and worked for the China Youth Climate Action Network the following summer, Copenhagen was a glorious attraction for me, academically and career-wise. This year, despite the frustrating outcome of Copenhagen and much cooler public enthusiasm, I decided that I am still motivated to build upon my experience and continue my efforts to organize and facilitate the Delegation as the stakes of no agreement is getting higher and the presence and voices of Chinese youth need to be sustained and lifted up and indeed--new sprouts need to be given chance to mature to lead waves of young Chinese into the spread the words of climate change, including learning ways to mitigate and adapt to it.

For the first China Youth Delegation to COP 15, the purpose was to organize a strong youth force and send our voices to the summit that we youth in China care about the climate change and we’ve done a lot to educate our peers and the general public. But this year to put the perspective back into the circle with Cancun being a big knot, the objective of promoting the ideas and examples of sustainable development was added into our COP 16 “constitution” of the team. And together with our U.S. counterparts, we come to Cancun with an agenda to spark the U.S.-China youth exchange into some long-term collaboration that bring youth into the field to experience and innovate sustainable development.

So for the team as a whole, while newbies are not only educated of the matters, they will also be exposed in Cancun—to the epicenter for-the-moment of climate change experts and solution practitioners—a place to accelerate the transition of each individual and the overall flow and movement of the big cycle. By transmitting back everything we will have experienced during the next two weeks, we are motivated and determined to stir up more cycles of transitions that will eventually flow into the mainstream of climate movement in China and around the world.