Agreement at Cancun.

I know, I surprised too.

Following a marathon final session delegates at the 16th Conference of Parties agreed amendments to the Kyoto protocol on climate change that substantially improve the chances of a replacement protocol being put in place for when Kyoto expires in 2012. Although these amendments have certainly been agreed they still need to go through the technicality of a formal vote before they can be published and publicly circulated. As a result I've only been able to read through the draft document that contains a variety of options of what the final agreement will be. However it's clear that the agreement will focus on three main areas;

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts. The annex 1 parties (developed nations) have agreed to cut their emissions to either 25/30/45/X % of their 1990 levels by 2020 and either 80/95/X % by 2050. In return for the pledges being made these targets are in no way legally binding and there is no international inspection mechanism. Therefore they rely on the goodwill and honour of the pledging nations for enforcement.

Greenhouse Gas Absorption This is the area where by far the most progress has been made with the parties agreeing to set up a voluntary, global emissions trading mechanism. This has allowed for significant agreement over vast technical aspects of what constitutes an emissions sink, what volume of reduction constitutes an emissions credit and an inspection system to make sure that claimed credits actually exist. Basically this provides all nations but especially the developing ones with a financial incentive to either stop cutting down forests or to plant new ones. That money can then be used to mitigate the effects of climate change or to buy green technology that reduces emissions further. Most importantly it will increase the amount of emissions being absorbed reducing the amount in the atmosphere and therefore reducing the pressure on countries to cut their emissions.

Adaption and Mitigation. The headline grabber from Cancun has been the agreement to set up a so called Green Fund. This will allow money and technical knowledge to flow into vulnerable nations to allow them to mitigate and adapt to the problems created by climate change. Unfortunately I've not even been able to read a draft of the structure of this fund so have no idea of the details in which the devil will most certainly hide. The two main areas of concern I have is whether this is independent of the wider process so that countries can access it without a legally binding agreement to cut emissions being reached because a lot of the problems it will tackle can't wait for that to happen. The second area is who will have the final say over where the money will be spent because if it is the donor nations then the recipient nations face having their sovereignty undermined.

Although not going anywhere near far enough this agreement is a significant breakthrough for the COP process. To put it in perspective the main obstructions this year came not from the USA or China but from Hugo Chavez's Confederation of Latin American Republics fronted by Bolivia. Their Marxist ideology meant that they were unhappy that although this agreement will help to tackle climate change it won't lead to a sort of one world government. Also they objected to the setting up of a global emissions trading mechanism because it was a capitalist idea. Personally I find that almost amusingly hypocritical because Venezuela especially is an oil based economy meaning that it is already deeply involved in a global capitalist carbon trading system.