Cancun and COP16 - progress continues in small steps

From the news reports from COP16 Cancun there appears to be some further incremental developments for international cooperation on climate change. From the Wall Street Journal -

CANCUN, Mexico—The world's nations on Saturday agreed to a package of climate initiatives, including billions of dollars in funding for poor countries, although they failed to adopt a binding climate treaty amid a stalemate among the U.S., China, Japan and other nations.

The agreement calls on rich countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by amounts nations pledged a year ago, although the cuts aren't legally binding. Developing countries are to come up with plans to cut their emissions in a worldwide effort to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The agreement includes plans for a green fund and $100 billion a year that wealthier countries would provide by 2020 to help poor countries finance programs to cut emissions and cope with drought and other effects of global warming.

A stalemate among the U.S., China, Japan, India and other countries has frozen talks on a global climate treaty and thrown into question the future of the existing Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. But diplomats said they hoped the Cancun plan could pave the way for a legally binding climate treaty when governments reconvene at next year's U.N. climate summit in Durban, South Africa.

Japan has said that it wouldn't commit to a second phase of the Kyoto treaty unless the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitters, namely China, the U.S. and India, agreed to cut their emissions under a legally binding treaty. The first phase of the treaty ends in 2012.

The U.S., which signed but never ratified the Kyoto treaty, has long argued that it wouldn't agree to mandated emission cuts unless China and other fast-growing economies also agreed to limit emissions. But at climate negotiations a year ago in Copenhagen, both the U.S. and China made voluntary commitments to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

China has maintained that as a developing country, it doesn't have the resources—or responsibility—to aggressively cut emissions while growing its economy.

India initially had a similar position, although the country softened it this week, saying it would consider agreeing to mandated cuts at some point in the future.