Tiempo Climate Newswatch

After over-running on the final day, the Cancún climate summit ended with two major agreements. The developed nations, recognizing their historic responsibility, "must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof," states the agreement on long-term cooperative action. Developing countries, for their part, will take "nationally appropriate mitigation actions in the context of sustainable development," subject to adequate financial and technical support. A compromise agreement was reached on an international inspection regime for these nations, a development that China had opposed. Under the second agreement, the Kyoto Protocol will continue beyond 2012. This was despite opposition from Japan, though critical details, such as national emissions targets, have still to be negotiated. The overarching goal of the two agreements is to hold the increase in global average temperature to below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This goal will be reviewed after five years and the need to restrict the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be considered.

Adaptation is now given equal weight with mitigation in the international response. The wide-ranging Cancún Adaptation Framework covers: planning and implementing adaptation actions; impact, vulnerability and adaptation assessment; strengthening institutional capacities; building social and ecological resilience; enhancing disaster risk reduction strategies; measures regarding climate change-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation; development and transfer of technologies, practices and processes and capacity building; strengthening data, information and knowledge systems, education and public awareness; and improving climate-related research and systematic observation. A process will be established that enables least developed country nations to formulate and implement national adaptation plans. The Green Climate Fund will provide "scaled-up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding" for developing country activities and will be run by developing and developed countries, resolving contention regarding the role of the World Bank. Support will rise to a goal of US$100 billion a year in 2020. Agreement has also been reached on finance to support developing countries limit emissions by forest protection.

In his closing address, Mexican president Felipe Calderón declared the conference a success, saying that the agreements "altered the inertia and have changed the feeling of collective powerlessness for hope in multilateralism" that had settled over recent negotiations. The role of Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in pushing through the two agreements was highly commended. She was described as a "goddess" by the Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

Climate change could cause nearly one million deaths a year by 2030, according to a report from Development Assistance Research Associates (DARA) and the Climate Vulnerable Forum. Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010: The State of the Climate Crisis documents the vulnerability of 184 nations to short-term climate impacts in the areas of health, weather disasters, habitat loss and economic stress.

The report also details effective ways to avoid fatalities, such as averting weather disasters by planting mangroves to prevent flooding and flood-proofing houses. Local early warning systems to alert people to coming disasters can be cost-effective within a year. They are most relevant to low-income countries where 90 per cent of deaths due to natural disasters occur. Avoiding widespread death from climate-sensitive diseases like malaria is also deemed particularly cost-effective. "If we let pressures more than triple, or worse, no amount of humanitarian assistance or development aid is going to stem the suffering and devastation," commented DARA head Ross Mountain. "Highly fragile countries will become graveyards over which we pour billions of dollars. Low-lying islands will simply not be viable anymore, then disappear. We will all pay and we will pay big time."

An international conference will be held May 2011 in the United States to discuss the legal implications of the complete loss of a nation-state's territory due to climate change. "We're facing a set of issues unique in the history of the system of nation-states," said Dean Bialek, adviser to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. "We're confronting existential issues associated with climate impacts that are not adequately addressed in the international legal framework."

The government of the Marshall Islands has sought advice from the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York, who will host the May conference, to advise on the issue. "If a country like Tuvalu or Kiribati were to become uninhabitable, would the people be stateless? What's their position in international law?" asked Jane McAdam from the University of New South Wales in Australia. "The short answer is, it depends. It's complicated." Michael Gerrard, head of the Center for Climate Change Law, asks "If [the Marshall Islands] go underwater, what becomes of their fishing rights?" Licensing tuna fishing is a major income source for the nation.