Start the Climate Summit in Cancun

The thing is usually something like this. Each year, on December, more than 190 environment ministers meet in search of a deal that allows combat climate change, a final binding agreement to replace the 2012 Kyoto Protocol. At each summit will take place political speeches on how global warming is the greatest global challenge, a major global threat ... And every year, the summit ends in frustration, in a compact minimal at best, or cross-complaints blaming the blockage in the negotiations. Then the leaders return home to take care of the urgent: the depreciation of the yuan, the next election or the differential with the German bond and the Cancun Climate Summit.

The Cancun Summit that begins today in Mexico can vary somewhat. Nobody expects anything. Or almost nothing. The negotiators are content to reassemble the boat start of trading on the UN after the wreck of the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, where the presence of more than 150 Heads of State and Government did little to agree on how to reduce emissions.

Climate Summit in Cancun

Secretary of State for Climate Change, Teresa Ribera, said that the negotiators "lost innocence" in Copenhagen and this year "can not think of an international treaty out of Cancun." If anyone thought that the speeches were enough to revolutionize the global energy system is wrong. Now it is "to ensure that the contents of the Copenhagen agreement be anchored within the UN," according to Ribera, one of Europe's most experienced negotiators in the complex framework of the UN.

Copenhagen resulted in an agreement in which 120 countries committed themselves voluntarily to limit their emissions. Moreover, large emerging economies agreed to publicize their emissions and help rich countries to less developed economically to combat warming. However, the agreement did not the UN official, as Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua and the Summit opposed require unanimity. So now it is negotiating to recover, to heal the wounds and put the UN in the points of that agreement in the enviroment.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said in his welcome message that there is good points, as the agreement to finance rich countries to curb tropical deforestation: "There is general support for establishing a mechanism to implement projects forestry sector in developing countries, with support from various funding sources and in full respect for the rights of indigenous communities. "

Cancun Climate Summit

The problem, as explained Ribera, is that "it is possible to think that you can remember only the creation of a Green Fund and the fight against deforestation." These mechanisms are linked to the developed countries, mainly US-accept lower their emissions as major emerging economies, notably China, to allow their emissions to be audited and the Cancun Climate Summit.

The problem is that the U.S. is increasingly able to offer less. Last year, the administration of Barack Obama pledged to cut their emissions by 17% in 2020 compared to 2005. Claimed he could not go further until Congress does not approve the Climate Change Bill was pending. Today this law is stuck in the Senate. In the November elections the Republicans won a majority in the House, and many of them skeptical about the seriousness of climate change. Most analysts such as Daniel Weiss, the research center Center for American Progress, considered almost impossible that this mandate Obama will take forward this legislation and the enviroment.

So Teresa Bank considers it essential that Cancun is not a total ruin. Europe fears that if Obama returns to Washington with a new failure that gives wings to the Republicans who are winning the battle in the American public.