Brussels, 08/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - In Cancun, there are increasing calls for extra effort, and with good reason. Three days before it is due to close, the UN climate conference (COP 16, 29 November-10 December), which entered its final phases on Tuesday, is still stumbling over two major issues: the fate of the Kyoto Protocol post-2011, and the procedure to verify commitments, on which the US and China disagree.
“I am deeply concerned by the fact that efforts so far have been insufficient. All countries must do more”, said Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the UN, at the start of the ministerial section of the COP meeting. Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, also drove this point home. “Although the EU has been ready since Copenhagen to commit to a binding international agreement - and remains committed- we all know that this cannot be done here in Cancun. But it is absolutely vital that we deliver something. Something substantial. Something which leads to immediate action”, said the commissioner. Referring to “families experiencing floods in Pakistan, farmers in Mali suffering the effects of desertification and drought, Arab villagers facing acute water shortages”, Hedegaard added: “We owe it to them and we owe it to all other citizens of the world for whom climate change is already a fact of everyday life to end this week with a list of decisions to put the world on the right track for a sustainable future and cleaner and greener growth”.
Japan, Russia and Canada are digging in their heels in their refusal to extend the Kyoto Protocol, so far the only legally binding treaty, whilst India is calling for a second commitment period. As for the United States, which “turned its back on the Kyoto protocol, it is now looking for the weakest wording in any text which would bind them to action for the future”, lamented MEP Bairbre de Brun, (GUE/NGL, Ireland). She went on to warn: “It is a good thing that talks in Cancun started more positively and constructively than in Copenhagen last year, but COP 16 will be judged on whether or not it is able to adopt substantial concrete decisions for the populations of the poorest countries”. She therefore called on the industrialised countries to commit to much more ambitious objectives for the reduction of their emissions in order to bridge the divide between actions promised and actions judged necessary by science. Observing the timetable for rapid funding for the developing countries and the creation of new funds under the aegis of the EU are, in her opinion, two further vital conditions. (A.N./transl.fl)