The highlight of my day at the climate summit was meeting the president of Mexico, the country hosting what is turning out to be the usual spectacle of intergovernmental haggling over the future of our planet. I snapped him on my Blackberry just prior to shaking his hand
But what makes this even so differant from last year's in Copenhagen -- apart from it being a pleasant 22 celsius in contrast to 15 below in the Danish capital -- is the Latin approach. President Felipe Calderón, who has two years remaining until the end of his six year term in office, has been setting the tone by walking around the conference in a relaxed manner and talking friendlily with anyone and everyone.
But this casual appearance disguises the critical and high pressure negotations that are going on betwen the 194 nations represented here. Meetings went on well into last night. Right now, the differances seem to be as great as ever with fears that the event will end in deadlock. Everyone who wants a solution knows that it would be quite disasterous for this whole process for these talks to end in the same dissapointing way as last year. I honestly beleive that the credibility of multilaterilsm is at stake here.
Another contrast to last year is the limited media coverage. In Copenhagen, where 120 heads of state and government came, the summit attracted massive news attention. There are some 2,000 reporters here as opposed to the 3,000-strong press corps at the previous event. I was told by the single BBC reporter here that the BBC News budget had been stretched by the huge coverage of the dramatic Chilean miners' rescue. There were 30 BBC staff covering the Copenhagen meeting.
My expectations for a meaningful outcome here are low. But I really do hope that enough will emerge to allow the process to move forward to next year's scheduled talks in Durban. It's 16 years since this U.N. series of international discussions started and 13 years since the first legally-binding treaty was agreed in Kyoto. While I had been beginning to doubt that a successor agreement will ever emerge, I can see that there is concerted effort going on to succeed. The original treaty expires in 2012, so time is surely running out.
On a lighter note, it is so pleasant to go to bed at night with my balcony window open and hear the soundes of the waves. Waking up in the morning to the sight of a beautiful beach with the sun rising on the horizon is exilerating.
Grandpa Jonathan
Cancun, Mexico
