The buzz around the Cancun climate talks is that progress is possible on a range of issues, including things like technology centers, support for avoided deforestation, and a financial mechanism for helping developing countries. What these all have in common is that they involve developed countries doing things for developing countries. The one thing that developed countries could get in return is progress on transparency – but that file is in worse shape. Read more »

We’re now a week away from the start of the Cancun climate talks. Two big questions looming over the negotiations have been how China will address the question of transparency – it agreed last year to a process of “international consultation and analysis”, but has been balking on fleshing out the details – and whether there will be fissures within the broader group of developing countries. (There are, of course, many other big questions, not the least of which is what the United States can do given its domestic deadlock.) Read more »

I’m in India this week for a series of meetings on energy, climate, and global governance, and I’ve been reminded, once again, of how wedded some major countries still are to the Kyoto protocol.

A quick bit of recent history: U.S. analysts (and many U.S. policymakers) spent much of 2009 trying to dream up the best possible successor to the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto itself, they assumed, was essentially in the past as a negotiating issue. (This was a natural extension of the U.S. domestic scene, where Kyoto is irrelevant.) Then they showed up at Copenhagen and were forced to spend much of it debating the future of Kyoto. Indeed many of the procedural issues that made a mess of the conference had to do with how Kyoto would be handled. Read more »

I had the privilege of participating in a workshop last week in Shanghai that included participants from all four BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China). Our conversations took me back to a question that’s been bothering me since the rise of the BASIC coalition last year, and its influential (and in many ways very counterproductive) influence at Copenhagen. With BASIC set to continue its role as a major negotiating coalition, it’s important to make sure we understand what motivates each of its members to negotiate collectively. Here are some thoughts: Read more »

I was writing up some notes last week from a trip to India earlier this year when I came upon this from an interview with a senior official:

“No negotiator believes that the U.S. goal is to address climate change. They think they need to protect themselves.” Read more »