Tag Archives: climate change treaty

For all their potential promise, apparent earnestness and gravity – not to mention their possible effects and potential ramifications – it’s hard at times not to be cynical about high-level political negotiations. Such might be felt of the United Nations (UN) climate treaty negotiations which got under way this week in Warsaw, Poland. People have good reason to be skeptical of the climate treaty …

Representatives from UN bodies have been meeting with indigenous community leaders, experts and climate scientists in a series of meeting during the last few years, the overarching aim of which is to ensure that indigenous peoples have a say in international climate negotiations and treaties, and that traditional knowledge is incorporated in a globally shared knowledge base of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, methods and tools.

Conflicting positions are undermining efforts to find agreement on greenhouse gas reductions. Delegates at the recent climate talks in Bonn made no progress on binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, nor were they able to agree on a deal to replace the soon to expire Kyoto Protocol. The climate change talks began with a document called “A Shared Vision for Long-Term Cooperative Action.” The problem is, there is no shared vision …

It’s the big pink elephant in the room that few others wish to acknowledge, but a central theme in a new report by former climate negotiator Nigel Purvis: An international climate change treaty isn’t likely to be signed anytime soon. Purvis served as president Clinton’s chief UN climate negotiator, and in his report released today Purvis says that the United States and Europe should …