Mexico refuses to bow to climate treaty pessimism

Mexico's top climate change negotiator has this week accused top UN and EU diplomats of undermining the chances of progress towards an international climate change deal this year by being unduly pessimistic about the prospects for November's annual UN climate summit in Cancun.

Wary of a repeat of the stratospheric expectations ahead of last year's Copenhagen Summit that left many observers branding the event a failure, senior officials from many of the most influential negotiating teams have gone on record as saying they do not expect an agreement to be reached in Mexico later this year.

But in an interview with the Reuters news agency on the sidelines of this week's UN climate talks in Bonn, Mexico's climate chief Luis Alfonso de Alba said that such pessimism reduced the chances of significant progress being made this year.

"The UN secretariat, Yvo de Boer, and some other actors, the European Commission, Connie Hedegaard, have frequently referred to the impossibility of reaching a legally binding agreement in Cancun, (and) do not imply that important decisions can be taken in Cancun," he said. "We do not share that view. They are somehow lowering expectations for Cancun."

Officials from China and the US have similarly signaled that they do not expect a binding agreement to be reached in Cancun with most observers now predicting that if a deal is to be reached it will not occur until the 2011 summit in South Africa.

However, De Alba insisted that substantial issues could be resolved in Cancun, particularly with regard to carbon emission cuts, deforestation, climate financing for poorer countries and adaptation.

"Mexico does not want to raise false expectations but we certainly are ambitious," he said, adding that it may even still be possible to deliver some form of binding treaty this year. "If you get an agreement, have all the pieces of the puzzle together, it's very easy to translate that into a legally binding instrument or to take a decision to do it partially."

He added that Mexico would not repeat some of the mistakes made in Copenhagen, where he said the negotiations became focused on trying to deliver a single legally-binding treaty rather than addressing the substance of that agreement.

In a potentially significant move De Alba told Reuters that the passage of the US climate bill was not an essential requirement for any international deal, and signaled that he expects the Copenhagen Accord to play a "critical role" in this year's negotiations, despite on-going objections from some countries to the document.

He also confirmed Mexico's foreign minister Patricia Espinosa would be president of the summit in Cancun, marking a shift from the previous tradition of appointing the host country's environment or climate change minister to lead the negotiations.

De Alba's optimistic assessment of the year's negotiations came as the latest round of talks in Bonn got off to an underwhelming start as familiar tensions between rich and poor nations re-emerged and the UN climate secretariat admitted that it currently did not have the funds necessary to organise two further rounds of talks ahead of the Mexico Summit.

A new version of a draft negotiating text is expected to be presented over the weekend, after a version presented earlier in the week containing elements of the Copenhagen Accord was rejected by a handful of Latin American countries who have reportedly secured tacit support from a number of other developing nations.