Christina Figueres and Ban Ki-moon (Reuters)
COP 16 winds up at the end of this week. It is not the blockbuster that Copenhagen was last year – and that’s no surprise. All the foofaraw from last year has been replaced by a bit more focus and many fewer expectations. There are far fewer people as well: 120 world leaders attended the Copenhagen meetings, plus more than 45,000 delegates and observers. This time there’ll be about 25 world leaders and up to 22,000 people, including 9,000 delegates, plus journalists and other observers.
In any event, progress should be realized on a number of critical fronts. Among these are expected to be REDD+, finance, technology transfer, and MRV. There are scores of reports coming out of Cancún by the day. For a good summary, see this Factbox from Reuters about what the shape of things might be at the end of the week. Also, the good folks at the law firm Baker & McKenzie offer this postcard. It’s a bit of wonky reading, but the salient points on some of these key issues are there.
World Bank Chief To Launch Carbon Market Fund is one headline from Reuters. The fund will help emerging market countries set up their own carbon markets. Countries will likely include China, Mexico, Chile and Indonesia. Cap-and-trade may be dead (or in suspended animation) on a national scale, owing to the blissful ignorance and sloth of too many members of the United States Senate (not to mention its grotesque structural flaws), but, it’s very clear, the carbon markets are here to stay. (Apologies to the Gershwins.)
I’m on a couple of listserves that are fairly constantly reminding folks in Cancún of side events. I’d really much rather be there, to tell you the truth, to be in on many of these events than taking part in the formal proceedings. There are scads of these meetings, symposia, panel discussions, and presentations with very knowledgeable folks talking about things of abiding interest to climate and energy wonks like me. Oh well.
Let’s see how the week wraps up. We’ve got miles to go before we sleep, but there really is a wonderful degree of intelligent energy and focus that is being brought to bear – in Mexico for the Conference of the Parties, but also all around the world, more and more every day. (I’m only a cockeyed optimist, maybe, but you cannot deny the progress, enthusiasm, and momentum.)
