They will also find sensible guidance on how to overcome the sense of drift that has gripped the climate negotiations for much of this past year. If they heed his call they may discover that African soils are not for burying the climate regime as some pessimists suggest, but rather for growing the seeds of its future success.
When Senator Kennedy spoke at the University of Cape Town in June 1966, he identified four specific obstacles to transformative change. Today these same obstacles loom in Durban, threatening implementation of the Cancun Agreements, a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, and agreement on a mandate for a comprehensive and legally binding agreement by 2015.
The first obstacle Kennedy identified was “futility;" the belief that success is beyond reach. It has become fashionable to dismiss the UNFCCC as a dysfunctional forum where agenda fights are the norm, and speaking points are traded at the expense of reasonable and constructive dialogue.
The second obstacle he highlighted was that of “expediency;" the view that we must trade idealism for pragmatism. In Durban this means setting aside urgency and ambition for an incremental and voluntary approach to climate policy in order to pacify some of the key players and the domestic political constraints they face.
The third obstacle was “timidity." At COP17 there is a danger that some key players will arrive feeling hesitant, distracted by the political and economic events of the past weeks, and consequently will lack the resolve to work towards a grand bargain to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The fourth and final obstacle is “comfort;" the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths. By UNFCCC standards this means stumbling to the end of the second week of negotiations with just enough progress to claim that we have saved the process but not necessarily the climate. Read the full report here.
Source: by Jennifer Morgan and Edward Cameron, WRI Insights.
