Reflections on the Cancun Conference of 2010

Abstract

A comprehensive global agreement on climate change, embodying environmental
adequacy, equity and justice in matters both of adaptation and of mitigation is urgently needed, but the obstacles to achieving such an agreement remain so formidable that satisfying these ethical criteria was beyond the realm of the possible at the Cancun conference of 2010 even for those aiming to do so. In the circumstances, the degree of achievement attained and the restoration of progress
towards an eventual satisfactory agreement after the failure of the Copenhagen conference of 2009 was striking. Judged by relevant ethical criteria, the Cancun conference was defective, and some participants merit ethical censure, but those participants whose aim was an environmentally and distributionally satisfactory agreement have no need to reproach themselves, particularly as they have restored hope that more significant progress can be made either at the Durban conference of 2011 or elsewhere in the near future.