My colleague Tim Gore, climate change policy advisor at Oxfam International, wrote this blog laying out what governments can achieve at UN Climate talks which are starting this week in Durban, South Africa. We’ve adapted the blog to the US context and are reposting it here.
It’s now two years since the frantic campaigning and manic diplomacy that led to theCopenhagen climate change conference, and the blame games that followed its inadequate result. As the next UN climate talks get under way this week in Durban, South Africa, we need a new script to explain what has been achieved since 2009 and what must come next in the fight to tackle climate change.
The good news is that the UN talks on climate change are not a re-run of the zombie negotiating process in the World Trade Organization. But the ten year anniversary of the launch of the ‘Doha development round’ should give us pause for thought about where we want the multilateral climate change regime to be ten years after Copenhagen, and whether we are on track to get there.
The agreements struck last year in Cancún did not deliver everything needed to address the perils of our warming world, but they are leading to action.
