Deputy Envoy for Climate Change Gives Post-Cancun Update
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Jonathan Pershing, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State, presented a comprehensive Post-Cancun Update today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here in Washington D.C. This was the second year in a row that the Deputy Special Envoy presented at CSIS after global climate negotiations. The high level overview given by Pershing broke down the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in such a way as to put the progress made at the latest Conference of Parties (COP16) in Mexico in context.
With practically all nations reaching consensus, COP16 produced what are being referred to as the Cancun Agreements. Building upon the major points of the Copenhagen Accord, the Cancun Agreements provide considerably more substance from which to start piecing together a global deal. The key elements of the agreements as Pershing describes include language on shared vision, adaptation, mitigation, transparency, finance, REDD, and technology. After listening to Pershing’s synopsis, one really does get the sense that many if not all the primary issues concerning global climate change have now been officially addressed in this latest text.
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