CANCUN, Mexico – After an all-night negotiating session at the annual United Nations climate change summit, Canadian officials anticipate another marathon session in the final hours of the conference.
Canadian Environment Minister John Baird said Friday he was still hopeful about reaching agreements on issues such as deforestation, adaptation and the deployment of clean technology.
But during an early morning news conference, the Canadian delegation acknowledged that it would be harder to resolve disputes surround the establishment of a system to monitor, report and verify commitments made by the parties in an eventual climate treaty.
Canada’s chief negotiator, Guy Saint-Jacques, said that the developing countries expressed concerns about the financial burden that such a system would place on their respective bureaucracies.
"The trick is to achieve a balanced package," said Saint-Jacques, "but I’m still reasonably optimistic."
Baird also acknowledged that he refrained from mentioning the Kyoto Protocol in his national statement to the conference on Thursday because the Harper government prefers to move forward under the framework of the Copenhagen Accord reached last year.
Climate scientists say that humans must rapidly scale back activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions, such as the consumption of gasoline and other fossil fuels, in order to avoid dramatic impacts around the world linked to global warming.
The Kyoto treaty is the only international treaty on climate change that sets legally binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere.
But Baird indicated it would not be practical to extend the Kyoto deal since the Americans, including their most progressive politicians, do not support it and would never sign on.
He has indicated at the conference that it’s possible to implement legally binding targets within the Copenhagen framework, supported by the Obama administration, but many developing countries would rather stick with the Kyoto treaty, signed in 1997.
Saint-Jacques also noted that Bolivia may try to obstruct progress on some of the side issues negotiated in the last hours of the conference because it is not happy with the tone of the negotiations.
Earlier in the week, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, told the conference in a lengthy and emotional speech that governments which oppose strong, mandatory targets to reduce emissions, would "be responsible for ‘ecocide,’ which is equivalent to genocide because this would be an affront to mankind as a whole."
Baird joked on Friday that this was the longest three-minute speech he had ever heard, referring to the time limit guidelines and national statements to the conference.
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