II The Path to the Cancun Agreement.
The Cancun Conference took place from November 29 to December 10, 2010. The Cancun goals were modest in light of the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen the year before to achieve an expected global solution to climate change. Copenhagen was expected to produce a global solution to climate change pursuant to a two-year negotiating process and agenda that was agreed to in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007.
To understand the ethical significance of Cancun, it is necessary to review the twenty-year history of climate change negotiations that led to Bali, Copenhagen, and Cancun. This history constitutes a failed attempt over two decades to adopt a global solution to climate change.
Negotiations on a global climate change deal began in 1990 that led in 1992 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (Bodansky, 2001) The climate change negotiation process began in December 1990, when the United Nations General Assembly established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change, to negotiate a convention containing “appropriate commitments” in time for signature in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Because of the opposition of the United States and a few other countries, this treaty itself did not contain binding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limitations for countries but nevertheless included numerous other binding national obligations. Among other things, for instance, the parties to the UNFCCC agreed that:
(a) They would adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system;
(b) Developed countries should take the first steps to prevent dangerous climate change;
(c) Nations have common but differentiated responsibilities to prevent climate change;
(d) Nations may not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking action; and,
(e) Nations should reduce their GHG emissions based upon “equity”. (UN, 1992)
In the early UNFCCC negotiations, the European Union and Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) advocated establishing a target and time-table to limit emissions by developed countries in the UNFCCC, while the United States and the oil-producing states opposed this idea. (Bodanksy, 2001) Other developing states generally supported targets and time-tables, as long as it was clearly understood that these targets and time-tables would apply only to developed states. (Bodanksy, 2001)
The UNFCCC has 192 parties, a number that includes almost all countries in the world including the United States which ratified the UNFCCC in 1993.
The UNFCCC is a “framework” convention because it has always been expected that additional requirements would be added to the initial framework in updates that are known as “protocols” or in annual decisions of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs).
Each year, as the parties to the UNFCCC meet in COPs , decisions were made that affected the responsibilities of the parties. The UNFCCC COPs were as follows:
- 1995 – COP 1, The Berlin Mandate
- 1996 – COP 2, Geneva, Switzerland
- 1997 – COP 3, The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
- 1998 – COP 4, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 1999 – COP 5, Bonn, Germany
- 2000 – COP 6, The Hague, Netherlands
- 2001 – COP 6 (Continued) Bonn, Germany
- 2001 – COP 7, Marrakech, Morocco
- 2002 – COP 8, New Delhi, India
- 2003 – COP 9, Milan, Italy
- 2004 – COP 10, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 2005 – COP 11 Montreal, Canada
- 2006 – COP 12, Nairobi, Kenya
- 2007 – COP 13 Bali, Indonesia
- 2008 – COP 14, Poznan, Poland
- 2009 – COP 15, Copenhagen, Denmark
- 2010 – COP-16, Cancun, Mexico
Each year nations have meet in COPs to achieve a global solution to climate change and each COP for the most part continued to add small steps toward the goals of the UNFCCC. Yet, in all COPs, some nations have resisted calls from some of the most vulnerable nations to adopt a solution to climate change that would prevent dangerous climate change.
As the international community approached Cancun, no comprehensive global solution had been agreed to despite the fact that the original negotiations on the UNFCCC began in 1990 with a goal of achieving a global climate change solution. For this reason, Cancun must be understood as the latest attempt in a twenty year history of mostly failed attempts to structure a global solution to climate change.
The first major addition to the UNFCCC was the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated in 1997 because the international community had been convinced by then by the emerging climate change science that developed nations needed to be bound by numerical emissions reduction targets. The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005, and currently has 190 parties. The United States is the only developed country that never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
Going into the Kyoto negotiations, the European Union proposed a comparatively strong target, requiring a 15 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2010, while other industrialized states such as the United States and Australia proposed weaker targets, with Japan somewhere in the middle. (Bodansky, 2001) Ultimately, the issue was resolved by specifying different emission targets for each party, ranging from an 8 percent reduction from 1990 levels for the European Union, to a 10 percent increase for Iceland. (Bodansky, 2001)
