Global Greens - COP16 in Cancun

Global Greens Statement for COP16 in Cancun, December 2010

Climate change – time for transformation
1 December 2010

The Global Greens call on the leaders of the world’s industrialised countries at Cancun to reverse the failure of Copenhagen and create the conditions for a strong legally binding global climate agreement to avoid dangerous climate change and facilitate adaptation.

COP 16 at Cancun Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December, is the sixteenth meeting of parties to the UN Framework on Climate Convention since it was negotiated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Green parties from around a dozen countries will be represented.

The Global Greens, representing many millions of the Earth’s citizens, recognise that humanity cannot continue to live beyond the Earth’s ecological limits. Cancun is an opportunity to begin the transformation to sustainability, including through --

1. Political will and practical mechanisms to constrain global warming to no more than +2C above pre-industrial levels, especially by moving rapidly beyond coal and other fossil fuels through investment in energy-saving, resource-efficiency, and renewable energy.

2. Rules for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation including safeguards that ensure claimed emission reductions represent genuine abatement, that benefit and protect Indigenous peoples’ rights, and that protect and restore biodiversity, water and nature.

3. Commitment of substantial new funding by developed countries for emissions mitigation and climate change adaptation by developing countries.

4. Greenhouse gas accounting rules that prevent perverse outcomes, such as promoting biofuel plantations at the expense of biodiversity and critical food production in developing countries and giving loopholes to developed countries in the land use, land-use change and forestry sector.

5. Exclusion of carbon capture and storage from the Clean Development Mechanism, and rejection of nuclear power altogether.

The COP16 should commit to finalizing a legally binding agreement no later than 2011 covering these and other issues, building on the Kyoto Protocol.


More information: secretary@globalgreens.org