Lima witnessed the end game of a 20 year old negotiation around doing away with differentiation between countries at different levels of development and the beginning of negotiations on a global pact for sharing the carbon budget. It is all about geopolitics, not about the global environment.
The climate talks in Lima are proving to be so difficult because the issue before the negotiators is whether the Climate Treaty of 1992 needs to be tweaked to take into account the changed context, or whether a new treaty is needed.
What you measure determines policy
Another round of the annual climate meetings is going to take place and the most ambitious outcome will be limited negotiations on some elements, because there is as yet no shared vision of the problem and what to do about it.
The task for global governance in dealing with climate change is to focus on the interconnectedness between carbon dioxide emissions, standards of living and global ecological limits.
The new climate regime will lead to commitments only for developing countries, because the United States, which did not ratify the legally binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, continues to insist on a framework with nationally determined emissions reductions monitored at the global level.
The concerted opposition to the EU push towards forcing foreign airlines landing in Europe to become a part of its emissions trading scheme has led to an unexpected development, whose implications
The theme of the Rio + 20 Conference was "Green economy in the context of sustainable development and eradication of poverty" and it has not been possible to the find common ground in the serious differences over what constitute economic growth and human wellbeing – ‘the future we want’.
The significance of Rio+ 20 does not lie in any document but in the new direction provided to global governance, with Brazil, China and India shaping the global agenda.
The significance of Rio + 20 does not lie in any document but in the new direction provided to global governance, whose focus should be on patterns of natural resource use, and not just on natural capital, to ensure human well being.
The difference between countries is whether international cooperation is to be based around the “green economy” or around the “green economy in the context of sustainable development and eradication of poverty”.
