Hopes for Mexico climate deal fading fast

Two of the key players in international negotiations to deliver a new climate change treaty have this week admitted that they no longer expect a deal to be reached later this year at a UN summit in Cancun, Mexico.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister who chaired much of last year's Copenhagen Summit and now European commissioner for climate action, revealed that an agreement this December now looks highly unlikely.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Berlin alongside visiting Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, Merkel said the focus for this year's negotiations had shifted from securing a binding treaty to building on the voluntary pledges contained in the Copenhagen Accord that aim to limit temperature rises to two degrees.

She added that the negotiations for a legal treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012 remained hampered by the "structural problem" of China and India's refusal to countenance any form of binding emission targets.

Nasheed, who has emerged as a key player in the ongoing climate change negotiations after warning that his low-lying nation could disappear as a result of rising sea levels, said he is still optimistic a treaty can be delivered, but agreed with Merkel that "it may not happen this year."

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Financial Times, Hedegaard said that she was not pinning much hope on a deal being reached this year. "To get every detail set in the next nine months looks very difficult," she said. " Europe would love that to happen, and I would love that to happen... but my feeling is that it is going to be very difficult to get a treaty."

She also argued that to push for a treaty this year could prove counterproductive and hinted that this year's summit in Mexico would be lower key than the Copenhagen meeting, which was attended by more than half the world's leaders.

"You can do [a Copenhagen-style summit] one time," she told the paper, adding that pushing for an agreement this year would result in some countries shunning the Mexico summit. "People would say let’s skip that idea, let’s skip the UN thing."

Merkel and Hedegaard's comments are significant given that to date European leaders have stuck to the UN's official line that a treaty will be sought later this year.