No can in Cancun

"Let’s put the Can in Cancun” greeted the banners put up by NGOs on the way to the Moon Palace, a luxury beach resort with an 18-hole golf course, where the UN Climate Change Conference 2010 was being held from Nov 28th to December 10th. I had arrived late, one week into the climate change talks, via Dubai and Sao Paolo due to my visa woes. You see, for some reason unbeknownst to us all, the Mexican Embassy in Islamabad had packed up and closed shop a few months ago. That meant there was no way for me to get to Mexico from Pakistan (I found out much later that I could have gone on a valid US visa)! I decided to go to New Delhi first, where I was attending a climate change briefing on the 25th of November and then apply at the Mexican embassy there. I was already exhausted – and still ahead was my 3 day epic journey to Cancun!

I arrived in Cancun bleary-eyed and only recovered after around 12 hours of solid sleep. I woke up early and headed to the Moon Palace where I was not surprised to discover that I was the only journalist from Pakistan covering the UN conference second year in a row (the same thing happened in Copenhagen last year). This year the Islamabad-based NGO, LEAD-Pakistan (Leadership in Environment and Development) had been planning to take a large contingent of environmental journalists from Pakistan. Sadly, the funding that had earlier been approved for the journalists by a donor agency was cancelled by the time November came around. Instead LEAD-Pakistan invited officials from the forests department, the provincial disaster management departments and planning division in order to build the capacity of Pakistan’s delegation in these global negotiations.

I was in Cancun thanks to the Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) who had also funded my trip to Copenhagen last year. The CCMP is sponsored by Panos, Internews and the International Institute for Environment and Development based in London. This year, the CCMP selected around 40 journalists from a pool of over 700 applicants from developing countries to cover these talks. The CCMP provides an opportunity for journalists to report in depth on the negotiations and share their stories with millions of people in developing countries who might not yet understand how climate change will affect them in the future.

Of course due to the massive flooding that hit Pakistan last summer caused by the abnormal amounts of rainfall that fell at the end of July, we in Pakistan are now facing climate change reality. A day before I arrived in Cancun, a report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) blamed global warming for the extreme Asian summer monsoon in 2010. The report stated that “the year 2010 is almost certain to rank in the top 3 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850”. The WMO further explained that recent warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic. If this warming trend continues (because of rising greenhouse gases being emitted from cars, factories, coal power plants and deforestation all over the world) then we could be facing many more extreme weather events like the heavy monsoon and intense storms on the coast.

LEAD-Pakistan, in fact, organised a side event in Cancun to highlight Pakistan’s floods and their link with climate change at the Cancunmesse, a large hall full of stalls, seminar rooms and exhibits located 20 minutes by bus from the actual conference in Moon Palace. The event was titled “The world’s most devastating floods: Pakistan’s extreme climate event” and the one hour talk was well attended by media people, NGO officials and of course members of Pakistan’s delegation. Pakistan’s core negotiating team actually played an active role in these talks and managed to broaden the language in the final ‘Adaptation’ and ‘Shared Vision’ texts, which means that countries badly affected by climate change like Pakistan can receive funding soon from the newly created climate fund (up to $30 billion by 2012 have been pledged by rich countries).

Throughout the 2 week conference, the floods in Pakistan were mentioned in speeches and at various seminars and workshops. The floods have certainly drawn the world’s attention to the impacts of climate change on this region, but did the moving scenes of the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster in recent years” (according to UN head Ban Ki Moon) have any effect on the industrialized countries of the West who have actually caused climate change in the first place? Not really, as we discovered on our daily trudges to the Moon Palace from our hotel, which was located a good 45 minutes away on Cancun’s famous hotel strip. Hundreds of buses especially hired for this conference plied delegates to and fro with some trips taking up to one hour one way.

I soon found myself wondering just how much energy was being consumed to power this high profile conference! I mean, here we are discussing the future of the planet, currently on track for a 3 or even 4 degrees rise in temperature by the end of this century (scientists are saying that more than a 2 degrees rise in temperature by the end of the century will result in catastrophic changes to the climate) and we are debating this grim possibility in overly air-conditioned halls (it was not even hot in Cancun!) and riding happily on hundreds of gas guzzling buses because it really was too far to walk or even bike.

The location of the conference itself was questionable and I’m surprised the UN agreed to the venue. The hotel strip which eventually leads to downtown Cancun can only be described as Las Vegas relocated to the Caribbean seashore. Although the water is a lovely turquoise blue and the white sand beaches are certainly inviting, I would personally never come to Cancun for a holiday. The large scale construction of concrete blocks of hotels (there must be over a hundred all in one row) must have devastated the original ecology of the area; I heard it was once a vast tropical forest with dense mangroves surrounding the lagoon. The place lacks the charm of Bali or the authenticity of Havana. It is an artificial playground created primarily for US tourists who come down in the thousands for their vacations. There’s even a hotel called Wet and Wild!

This is what American tourists want from their holidays: to be able to relax in freezing air-conditioned rooms full of free beer and coffee (most hotels offer one inclusive rate) with a large Jacuzzi (who cares about water wastage?) and extensive rent-a-car facilities to be able to visit downtown Cancun with its many discos, bars and casinos. No wonder then that the American way of life does not want to acknowledge that its carbon intensive lifestyle is damaging the climate (with California being the major exception). The US delegation came to Cancun determined to have their way which was to operationalize the weak, pledge-based Copenhagen Accord that was salvaged at the last minute by President Obama last year, after persuading large emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) to come on board.

The BASIC countries were afterwards accused of selling out by the rest of the developing world, especially the African states and the low lying small island states which are threatened by even a 2 degrees rise in temperature. But the US cleverly mounted a year-long diplomatic offensive (whose details have now been revealed by Wiki-Leaks) of cajoling and arm-twisting these poor countries to endorse the accord. By the time Cancun arrived, they were ready with their strategy: “We want a balanced outcome” the US announced at the very start, meaning either we have progress on all issues or no deal. Most delegations had only been expecting some movement on finance and a deal on protecting forests and hoped to resolve trickier issues in South Africa next year, perhaps when the US had passed its own energy bill (currently stonewalled by the Senate) and was more amenable to a global treaty on limiting carbon emissions.

Instead, the US and other rich countries played up the fears that if the Cancun talks produced no overall agreements then the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process could be over (meaning no more funding for delegates to fly in from half way across the globe to meet annually and work on a global treaty). There was talk that the process would become part of the G-20 talks and the poorer countries were aghast at the prospect of being left out of the only truly global process there is, which works on consensus, meaning that every country, big or small, has its say and its vote.

The $30 billion promised by rich countries was used to tempt the small island states, the African countries and Least Developed Countries to sign up to the Copenhagen Accord, and in Cancun their Mexican allies were ready to help enshrine the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC process. The Mexicans were excellent hosts, open and welcoming, and they certainly worked hard to create a consensus. The President of Mexico involved himself personally, flitting from one venue to another, meeting with other South American delegates and convincing them to come on board. A petite, energetic man, one often ran into him and his posse of guards during the last week of the talks.

Finally, late on Friday night, the last day of COP-16 (16th meeting of the Conference of Parties signatory to the UNFCCC), the Mexican head of the Conference, Patricia Espinosa, was given a standing ovation by the delegates for the open manner in which she had conducted the proceedings. The Cancun Agreements “mark a new era in international cooperation on climate change,” she concluded at around 3 in the morning when a consensus finally emerged. The sleep-deprived delegates sure looked relieved that the process had been saved and they could all now make plans for Durban, South Africa, where many details of the agreements will be threshed out in 2011. So what did the Cancun Agreements achieve? Well, the developing world finally got the “Green Fund” promised in Copenhagen, whose architecture will be decided in the months to come; and the deal on protecting tropical forests was finally sealed and a technology transfer mechanism was decided upon.

The only country that was brave enough to stand up and tell the truth about what had just happened, however, was Bolivia. They pointed out that the final text was just not ambitious enough (in terms of emissions reductions) and that it was a return to the Copenhagen Accord. I felt bad for them – no one seemed to be listening although their delegate gave a detailed and clear analysis of the final text. “You know in principle they are absolutely right,” whispered a member of the Pakistani delegation. I’m sure others felt the same way.

NGOs could afford to be blunt and the feisty Sunita Narain of the Center of Science and Environment in New Delhi wrote in her news bulletin: “The agreement is crafted to change the architecture of the climate movement, to move towards a weak and ineffective deal, which does not compel rich countries to reduce their emissions and passes the burden of transition to poor countries. It does not address the problem of growing emissions and so will lead to greater impacts of a changing climate, particularly on the poor and most vulnerable”. Others, of course, saw the glass as half full rather than half empty.

“Cancun was a big step, bigger than many imagined might be possible,” announced Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, adding that nations must follow up “their successful UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun with higher global emission cuts and the rapid launch of new institutions and funds to show the world that a new era of international cooperation on climate change is an established fact.”

What do I think? Well, I would love to believe Ms Figueres, the successor to the far more charismatic Yvo De Boer (who resigned after Copenhagen) that something solid will come out of Cancun and that rich countries will decide to cut their emissions in the near future. But for now, I will end by copying what a friend in the Pakistani delegation posted on her Facebook page: “We were conned in Cancun. We were led to believe that we were saving the system but actually we ended up enshrining the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC and are now headed for a 4 degree future.”

Rina Saeed Khan is a freelance journalist

January 15-21, 2011 - Vol. XXII, No. 48