(Originally posted on Dec 14th, 2010)

The UN climate conference known as the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) ended this past weekend in Cancun, Mexico in what looks like a draw. The Cancun Agreements are seen by most as a “modest deal” that will keep the Kyoto Protocol on life support for another year. The Kyoto Protocol is the only international agreement with legally binding greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets for industrialized countries, and its first commitment period expires in 2012. It was hoped that Cancun would result in an agreement for the next phase of Kyoto GHG reductions post-2012 but this didn’t happen.

Although Canada, Russia and Japan have all ratified the Kyoto Protocol, thereby committing to binding GHG reduction targets, none of these countries expect to reach their existing commitments by 2012. So, no surprises here; each of these countries were dead set against any further binding targets. While the Cancun agreements establish a means to build on last year’s Copenhagen Accord coming out of COP 15, COP16 failed to achieve the UN’s Holy Grail: an international agreement with binding GHG reduction targets for both developed and developing countries post-2012. The major differences continue to be between the developing countries, like China, India and Brazil, who believe that the developed economies should bear the brunt of emissions cuts vs. the developed countries that point to the huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions from the rapidly growing (and emitting) economies of China, India and other emerging economies.

On the plus side, negotiators struck a deal that could see the continued rate of destruction of the planet’s forest cover reduced. They agreed on a framework for “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD) that will financially compensate countries who preserve tropical rainforests. In addition, a new fund was established to assist poor countries in adapting to climate change along with a mechanism to transfer green technology to these countries so they can avoid an over-dependence on fossil fuels. The good news is the size of the fund: $100 billion/year by 2020. The bad news: There are few details on exactly where the funds will come from and who will oversee the fund’s administration. Another encouraging sign from the Cancun meeting is an agreement on how emission reductions will be monitored, reported and verified (MRV), something many countries on both sides of the development continuum had resisted coming into the talks because they considered such third-party oversight to be an infringement of their sovereignty.

So, what does this mean for Canada? Unfortunately, our presence at the Cancun conference was seen as somewhat of a non-event. As my colleague, Scott Vaughan, the Federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has pointed out in reviewing federal climate change progress, the Canadian government has overstated its GHG reduction claims and its emissions will likely have increased 31.3 per cent by 2012. At least Ontario has made a more strategic effort (albeit, as I’ve said, they could and should be doing more). And, as I noted in my December 2009 annual progress report on climate change to the Ontario Legislature, we need to be seriously considering much more aggressive reduction targets out to 2020 (in the order of 25-to-40 per cent below 1990 levels); a position now endorsed by the Cancun agreements. The premise for this is based on the Copenhagen Accord which identified a threshold of not increasing average global temperatures beyond 2º C by mid-century. More recently, I’ve concluded that the true tipping point is 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere: a limit we’ve already exceeded.

In summary, Cancun takes us small steps forward rather than the giant leaps we need. No firm reduction targets have been stated; something that has been kicked forward (yet again) to COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, next year. While we wait (and wait and wait), the heat is on!