Here's Part 2 of Thorsten Schäfer's commentary:

Moving Forward After Cancun
 
Cancún was a symbolic victory. The concrete details on climate policy still have to be hammered out. One example: the participating countries failed to come up with an answer to how environmental policies will be funded. It’s a crucial question that has to be addressed before any sort of climate agreement can even work. Another example: nobody knows what the terms of a new forest preservation program would include—or if it’ll end up being abused and ignored like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) from the Kyoto Protocol. 

 

Under the CDM program, companies from wealthy industrial nations receive emissions certificates whenever they start new climate protection projects in developing countries. But what began as an incentive to protect the environment has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry. Some companies are raking in money from projects that have already existed for years or have little noticeable environmental benefit.
 
If international leaders don’t make forest preservation a top priority, some environmental organizaitons worry we could end up right back where we started. Just picture this scenario: you could have huge companies making a lot of money by clearing out naturally existing habitats and planting giant monocultures. On the surface, it would look like the company is adding to the region’s vegetation. But in reality, a monoculture would store far less CO2 and wouldn’t have nearly as much biodiversity as the original habitat. This could all be avoided if negotiators draw up strict forest preservation guidelines at the Durban summit next year. 

But much more still needs to be done in Durban. Like actually formalizing the agreement to keep the rise of global temperatures under 2 degrees. Also, both the USA and China have to be bound to any new treaty. The decision to simply extend the Kyoto Protocol terms was a mistake because it allowed both world powers to remain outside the loop. And all sides need to address the gap in legislation when Kyoto expires. Ratifying a new treaty can take decades, and international leaders will have to come up with a sensible way to bridge that gap.
 
Cancun was a success simply because it left so many questions unanswered. Mexico’s foreign minister Patricia Espinosa was only able to gather so many countries around one table because they weren’t bound to any specific evironmental legislation. Now, the pressure lies squarely on the Durban talks next year.

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow!

The climate talks in Cancun are over, and it's time to look at the big picture. Was it a success? One of our Deutsche Welle reporters, Torsten Schäfer, covered the summit and wrote a commentary after it was over. We're going to share it with you in three parts. So read along and let us know what you think!

Cancun: A Fragile Framework

In the end, the unexpected last-minute success at Cancun saved multilateralism and renewed international trust in UN-led negotiations. Still, much work is left to be done when it comes to fighting climate change. It's up to the EU to take charge, but first it has to find its voice again.

Expectations were modest at best going into Cancun–some experts even predicted a complete disaster. Despite the odds, negotiators were able to come up with a tangible framework. Their basic agreement is admittedly fragile and clouded by uncertainty. But still, international leaders created a foundation to build upon at the next climate talks in Durban. In Cancun, it wasn't the end product that was important but rather the process itself. The UN will continue to lead climate treaty negotiations–as long as each of the 194 participating countries is willing to put aside differences and forge a common climate policy. So that's how Cancun saved multilateralism, which is essential to international diplomacy and global climate policy.

That positive progress was sorely needed, especially after the complete failure in Copenhagen last year. Many people lost all faith in the concept of joint climate policy and in the UN as a whole. So Cancun was an important test of the UN's ability to win back trust and make some sort of progress before Durban. But environmental officials did one better: not only did they restore the international community's trust (thanks also in part to the UN biodiversity conference in Nagoya), but they also managed to find common ground on a series of concepts. Still, many questions remain unanswered–and that's one of Cancun's biggest shortcomings.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow….