Message of Cancun:

Climate fight continues

Joaquin Rivery Tur

VERONICA Mastretta’s blog foresees the future of the state of Nuevo Leon as a steer’s skull picked clean and surrounded by desert, as the result of increased temperatures and also the conclusion of the 16th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The image is apocalyptic but close to reality. As Milenio says, “Can you imagine the forested landscape of the Sierra Madre Oriental in the South of this State converted into a desert, like those which can already be seen in Aramberi and Zaragoza? Or see floods in the metropolitan area of Monterrey multiplied within shorter periods?

And that is only a vision of a Mexican territory, although backed up by serious scientific studies. What to say about the current situation in Colombia and Venezuela, with rivers overflowing their banks in an unprecedented way and devastating droughts in other latitudes?

The Cancun meeting on climate change was organized to try to halt the increase in the Earth’s temperature (approved at an extremely dangerous limit of two more degrees Celsius), to cut the greenhouse effect and although 193 countries signed the final document, it left much to be desired. Many Third World nations signed in order to leave the door open to further struggles against the waste generators and polluters of the developed world, others on account of naked pressure. They have not lost hope and are disposed to continue the battle to save the planet from industrialized predators, fundamentally the result of Washington’s irrational politics.

COP-16

The real result of the so-called Cancun Summit can perhaps be expressed by Marcelo Ebrard, head of government of the Federal District of Mexico, who declared that it was a replay of the meeting in Copenhagen, a failure.

Ebrard affirmed during a press conference that, in general terms, the Cancun meeting failed to secure the agreement that was wanted, and made the criticism that, in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-16), the rich countries failed to make a concrete commitment to reduce contaminating gases, the first demand from States most affected by global warming.

While a country like Mexico committed itself to reducing with its own resources 14 percent of daily emissions of polluting gases within a plan scheduled to begin in 2011, the United States shirked its responsibility in Cancun in terms of lowering pollution even by three percent.

US monopolies

Although Brazil signed the final document, prior to the meeting, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated that he did not believe in the success of the Summit on Climate Change, because he could see how the United States was maneuvering to evade any really substantial agreement. Washington’s only concern was the profits of its large financial-industrial conglomerates.

It was not going to be easy for the agents of US monopolies. Headed by the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) - thousands of people took to the streets demanding to live in a better world - the poor countries were more alert and ready to give battle, despite the fact that many are unable to extricate themselves from the economic pressure of the United States and other rich countries like Japan, which did not in any way wish to extend the Kyoto Protocol.

They were able to do something. The Kyoto document was left in effect until its official expiration in 2012, so there is time to continue the fight, above all in order to convince the populations of the rich countries, by using all of the mass media to pressure their governments to set goals that can save humanity.

Life on Earth

The survival of life on Earth is the principal objective. Gustavo Ampugnani, climate and energy campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Mexico, noted that the 16th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16) was an advance, because it rescued the process of negotiation, “which had been cast in doubt last year after the failure of the Copenhagen Conference, and which now, after the Cancun meeting, has been restored to life.” In other words, back to the battle, which has not as yet been won.

Ampugnani pointed out that the document is quite weak as it is composed.

The armored force of the summit was constituted by the Bolivian Government, with the total support of its ALBA colleagues and was the only one of the 194 present which did not sign the final document, because the indigenous government of Evo Morales is fundamentally attempting to save the planet, not to save capitalism.

La Paz considered that it was almost the same document which it rejected in Copenhagen, one that merely establishes voluntary measures of mitigation and accommodation to climate change.

“It was presented with some changes in form, but not of substance; Bolivia criticized it one year ago and is not going to subscribe to it.” Bolivia argued that the United States only committed itself to reduce its emissions to the 2006 levels. This would allow a temperature increase of five degrees.

“This document opens doors to a slow death, the slow agony of all the peoples. For that reason Bolivia has not signed this document.”

Kyoto Protocol

In relation to the Green Fund, created at this summit, he said that it does not guarantee the contribution of the $100 billion, as established, given that the document states that those resources will be ‘mobilized through 2020.’

In real terms, suffice it to recall the commitments of $167 million for the reconstruction of Haiti, of which barely 10 percent has reached Port-au-Prince. From this one can see the worth of the official aid for development, which still has not been delivered.

The non-governmental organizations Friends of the Earth and Global Justice Ecology Project were unequivocal in their rejection of the agreement signed in Cancun, because they considered that it will take ‘humanity to suicide’ and that the document is the result of a ‘US diplomatic offensive.’

Another NGO, Friends of the Earth of Latin America and the Caribbean, estimated that the agreement was a “death threat to the Kyoto Protocol, but even more importantly, to humanity, given that if what is proposed in it materializes, by the end of the century we will have a planet with a average increased temperature of more than five degrees Celsius, which will make the Earth too inhospitable.”

And Global Justice affirmed its ‘anger and displeasure,’ as representatives of indigenous peoples and communities which are already suffering the impacts of climate change.

NASA itself estimates that the temperature of the planet during 2010 will be the highest recorded in 131 years; if it increases by more than two degrees centigrade we will be very much at risk.

In any event, the responsibility of politicians from the major powers is great in the face of the announcement by the Spanish DARA research organization that a total of five million people, in their majority children, could be dead as a result of climate change by 2020.

Neither the US President, nor the Secretary of State were present in Cancun.

Although it did not produce tangible results, the meeting left the need to continue fighting clearer than ever.

Courtesy: Granma