| | |  Editorials | Environmental | June 2009 
Moving Slowly on Climate
 Arthur Max - Associated Press
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 |  | Everyone will hold his cards until the very end.
- Fernando Tudela |  | | |
Bonn, Germany - Mexico's chief negotiator at climate talks in Bonn said Thursday that he fears nations will hold off until the final Copenhagen meeting to make concessions and decide on environment proposals - one of which has been put forward by the Calderón administration.
Mexico and South Korea are among several countries putting forward suggestions and lobbying in the corridors to try to open new directions for the talks.
"Everyone will hold his cards until the very end," Fernando Tudela, Mexico's chief negotiator, said, lamenting the lack of movement.
Mexico has proposed a financing plan that fits neatly between the demands of receiving countries and those most likely to give. It calls for all but the poorest countries to contribute to a Green Fund according to its population, gross national product and its current and past carbon emissions. Developing countries could withdraw from the fund according to their requirements to adapt to climate change.
Tudela says his country is well placed to be a bridge builder. It is Latin American, exports oil and has strong North American trade ties. It also is a rapidly developing country that still understands the meaning of poverty. "We have good relations with everyone," Tudela said. "We can communicate with many countries."
South Korea is promoting an idea to require developing countries to register their plans to control pollution, skirting a deadlock on whether those commitments must be legally binding in an international agreement, as demanded by the U.S. and other industrial countries. Under the Korean plan, those carbon-cutting commitments would be embedded in domestic law but subject to outside verification.
CRITICAL COUNTRIES
Jake Schmidt, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said bridge-building countries like Mexico and South Korea play a critical role in the corridors of the negotiations, where the real action is happening. "Who puts forward the proposal sometimes matters just as much as what the proposal is," Schmidt said.
Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. negotiator, agrees, acknowledging that the U.S. still suffers from "a big trust deficit" from the years when the Bush administration shunned any international cooperation on climate change. That means its ideas often are met with skepticism. "People are interested in being positive - and worried about being duped," he said. |
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