Photo: Gretchen Weber

The UN climate talks in Cancun finally closed in the wee hours of Saturday morning with an agreement that doesn’t set new limits on greenhouse gases, but does move the discussion forward in key areas, such as funding to help developing nations deal with climate change and broad plans to reduce emissions by slowing deforestation in tropical areas.

Elliot Diringer, Vice President for International Strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, called the Cancun talks “the most tangible progress in the UN climate talks in years.”

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the talks was that they seemed to have salvaged the UN process itself.  Expectations were low for Cancun, and in the halls throughout the conference, there was ongoing speculation that perhaps the problem of climate change is just too complicated to expect all countries to agree on solutions.  But early Saturday, every country except Bolivia signed onto the new agreement, many betting that some progress was better than none.

“Countries that before insisted on binding-or-nothing were willing to declare a package of incremental steps a major success – if for no other reason than to keep intact the process they desperately hope will deliver much more down the road,” wrote Diringer in an email to reporters.

Trust was in short supply after Copenhagen, which ended with the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement written outside the formal UN process and created behind closed doors with just a few countries, including the United States, at the table. In the end, the full conference voted to formally “take note of” the accord, not quite a ringing endorsement.

Rumors circulated repeatedly in Cancun about “secret texts,” which the Mexican government took pains to refute. Patricia Espinosa, the minister of foreign affairs for Mexico and president of the convention, repeatedly stressed the importance of transparency, earning her several standing ovations during the final sessions.  As Bryan Walsh notes in his informative “Five Lessons to Learn from the UN Cancun Climate Summit” post at Time.com, “Just about every country other than Bolivia seemed to leave reasonably happy.”

The web is flooded with commentary about the Cancun talks, but here are a couple suggestions for getting up to speed.  Sunday’s Los Angeles Times had a good  front-page article about the outcome of the talks, and Mother Jones has a comprehensive piece cataloging various immediate reactions to it.  There’s also this “reality check“  from Marc Gunther, which makes the point that while all this “groundwork” is being laid, emissions continue to rise.

Coming into the conference, one of the most hopeful areas for consensus was an agreement on “REDD+”, a strategy for reducing emissions from deforestation, which accounts for between 12% and 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  While it does start the process for an international system for REDD, the “Cancun Agreements” punt the hard work of figuring out the details to next year’s conference in Durbin, South Africa.  As I explain in my radio piece for The California Report, California is already moving ahead with plans of its own on this front, through agreements with provinces in Mexico and Brazil.

Photo: Gretchen Weber.

Chanting the Spanish equivalent of “The fight continues!”, hundreds of protesters made their way through the streets of downtown Cancun Tuesday, to call for dramatic action on climate change.  Located about an hour by bus away from the Moon Palace where the UN talks are being held, the procession brought together climate activists from around the world, members of Mexico’s indigenous communities, and dozens of journalists eager to report on one of the few major protests at COP16.

Coordinated by a network of climate groups who dubbed Tuesday a “Global Day of Action – 1,000 Cancuns,” the march was timed with demonstrations around the world, including one in San Francisco.  In Cancun, the marchers chanted, sang, beat drums, and danced in the streets, called for workers’ rights, protested inaction on global warming, and in some cases, denounced capitalism.

“We’re marching for life, and for social and environmental justice,” said Sara Mersha of the group Grassroots Global Justice for All. Mersha came down from Boston. “Because we want folks who are negotiating the COP to know that we support people solutions for climate justice, and we don’t support false solutions like REDD or the carbon market.”

REDD is the acronym for a deforestation-reduction mechanism that has become a major topic here at COP16.  The scheme has not yet been worked out, but generally, it involves payment for developing nations not to burn their forests and carbon offset credits for companies in the developed countries.  Many inside the Moon Palace think REDD could be one of the few areas where serious progress could be made this year toward an international climate deal.

Nonetheless many marchers in Cancun on Tuesday wore or carried signs that said, “No REDD.”  Opponents fear that REDD programs will drive indigenous peoples off land where they have lived for generations.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, locals gathered outside a Mission District parking lot that the city is planning on transforming into affordable housing and a community garden.

“Communities have the solutions in their hands, from urban gardening, to providing food for their communities, to protecting local water resources, to creating energy alternatives,” said Ananda Lee Tan, a coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, one of the groups participating in the Global Day of Action. He echoed the sentiments of the Cancun protesters, adding that the reason for the Mission District rally was to “demonstrate local community opposition to the corporate destruction of this planet through climate change.”