I'm brushing up on my Spanish (reading through the description of one of the civil society venues in Cancun was a good start!) and getting ready for the UN Climate Negotiations in Cancun.
These UN negotiations would be a heck of a lot more confusing if we didn't have such gifted allies who can explain the issues clearly.
Two pieces came out in the last 24 hours that are worth a read.
The first, from Climate Action Network-International Executive Director David Turnbull, provides a set of 3 things to look out for. Here are the three items David mentions:
-The problem is politics, not the process
-We need to promote successes that happen, however small
-We need to Get to Work ! (we like this one a lot…)
The second, from Eco Equity Director Tom Athanasiou (and co-author of the incredibly helpful 350 Emissions Pathway report) provides an even more in-depth political analysis. Here's an excerpt:
"The transparency problem is not a small one. Verification is a charged and intrusive process in which industrial secrecy and state sovereignty are both at risk. But the deeper issue, now as always, is the South’s fear that the climate transition will mean the end of its dreams of development. That, even as the ice melts and the storms rage, endless negotiations will unfold into a trap, a narrowing series of gambits and tradeoffs in which the powerful North shifts the burdens of transition to the weaker, and far less culpable, South. In this context, transparency means lost flexibility, and thus risk. Nor is this a paranoid view of the situation. The recent positions of the US – which seems to have taken its domestic travails as license for bluster and aggressiveness – have done much to make it credible, and to exacerbate distrust."
There's a lot to chew on in that paragraph. As Tom concludes his piece, the negotiations will certainly not be boring! We'll be there with a great crew, filling you in every step of the way.