Low Expectations Results in Satisfaction

By Christine Burns ’14

Each year when the Conference of the Parties takes place, the world holds its breath, waiting for the delegates to come to an agreement in which all the important nations of the world have cooperated to come up with a plan, a part two to the Kyoto Protocol in which everyone takes part.  Unfortunately, these expectations are too high.  There are too many important parties, with too many different goals.  I cannot say that I find a lot of hope from either the Cancun Agreement or the Copenhagen Accord, but maybe I am simply being too pessimistic.  After reading both documents and reviews of both documents I fail to see enough concrete plans in either one.

To start at the beginning, the Copenhagen Accord was inconsequential.   After all the hype surrounding the global cooperation that would result from COP 15, people could not help but be disappointed by the five page document that mostly acknowledges all that has not been accomplished and all that still needs to be accomplished without giving much to change the status of either. The Copenhagen Accord could have never lived up to its expectations, yet it could have done much better.  The Copenhagen Accord was fluff, and even delegates present to the conference were disappointed.  Antonio G. M. La Viña says, “I was depressed and disappointed with the outcome of Copenhagen and writing about it would bring back the despair and anger particularly of the last hours.  I also did not want to join the destructive blame game that became the staple of most analyses that came out of Copenhagen.”  He goes on to say that he does not blame any one country for the lack of progress, and delineates a set of guidelines that he thinks would encourage more cooperation and progress in the future.

Fast-forward to the Cancun Agreement, and a follow up to the Kyoto Protocol is crucial, yet after the failure of COP 15, there is very little hope for Cancun. The lack of hope combined with a document longer than five pages, made Cancun a general success.  Some people such as Jenifer Morgan do find hope from the Cancun Agreement, saying, “the Cancun climate talks concluded with the Cancun Agreements, a set of decisions that will move international action on climate change forward. A turning point for international climate negotiations…”  While I do not think that Cancun was a turning point for international climate negotiations, I do think some progress has been made.  The first area of progress was transparency of the system.  The Cancun Agreement lays out the need for everyone, Annex I or otherwise, to report on their emissions as well as their mitigation plans.  The Cancun Agreement reinforced that extensive emissions reductions needed to happen, and that it was the responsibility of the developed countries to take the lead and start reducing.  Yet it did not set the definitive, numerical, targets that would have been ideal.  It also put forward the need for developed countries to support monetarily and technologically developing countries. It set forth plans for the “Green Climate Fund” which will help finance sustainable development and mitigation efforts in developing countries.  Finally, the Cancun Agreement suggests that developing countries should work with the aid of the developed countries to start reducing emissions, while acknowledging that, “economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing country Parties.”

Overall, the Cancun Agreement did not do enough, but it did far more than the Copenhagen accord. So although I am not satisfied with either I can onluy hope that the improvement from Copenhagen to Cancun is a sign of things to come, while being wary of having expectations that are too high.

Works Consulted:

Climate Action Center. “A climate con-analysis of the Copenhagen Accord.” http://www.climateactioncentre.org/climatecon.

Morgan, 2010. “Reflections on the Cancun Agreements.” http://www.wri.org/stories/2010/12/reflections-cancun-agreements.

La Vina, Antonio. 2010. “Ways Forward after Copenhagen: Reflections on the Climate Change Negotiating Processes by the REDD-plus Facilitator.” http://www.field.org.uk/files/AT_La_Vina_Copenhagen_reflections_FIELD_Feb_10.pdf