Isra-Mart srl:Mexican hosts to focus on climate adaptation and opportunity

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The Cancun climate change summit will kick off today with a call to ministers and officials to deliver progress on a handful of crunch issues, rather than try to thrash out a finalised agreement.

Mexican diplomats have been working for months to narrow down the topics for discussion during the first week of the talks, in an attempt to avoid a repeat of last year's Copenhagen summit where little progress was made during the initial phase of the meeting. As a result, ministers and world leaders arrived for the final few days to be confronted by negotiating texts that ran to hundreds of pages.

Officials arriving in Cancun will today be urged to focus on a number of areas where an agreement could be reached this week, including plans for a green fund and new mechanisms for protecting rainforests under the so-called REDD+ initiative.

In addition, the hosts will try to ensure voluntary emission reduction pledges made in Copenhagen are formally incorporated in the ongoing negotiations.

UK climate change and energy secretary Chris Huhne, who will jet out to Cancun later this week, praised the shift in tactics undertaken by the summit's hosts. "The Mexican hosts have done their homework, they've gone to enormous lengths to build trust and confidence among the countries, and there is every reason this morning for all negotiators to roll up their sleeves and get talking," he said.

Speaking at an event to inaugurate a wind turbine that will power the Moon Palace Hotel outside Cancun which is to host the summit, Mexican president Felipe Calderon said throughout the talks he would stress the economic and commercial opportunities that accompany efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"This dilemma between protecting the environment and fighting poverty, between combating climate change and economic growth is a false dilemma," he said.

The EU and several developing countries have signalled they will use the summit to highlight the business opportunities that can be realised through a low-carbon economy, arguing that the main reason the Copenhagen summit failed was the belief among some countries that their economies would suffer if they cut emissions.

Writing in the Observer newspaper yesterday, British prime minister David Cameron argued that the "profit motive" could be harnessed to effectively tackle climate change. "I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact," he wrote.

However, Calderon said that the talks would also have to focus on how to adapt to climate change, noting that "basically, what we're going to discuss is adaptation."

His comments came as a series of scientific reports released over the weekend warned that based on current emission reduction pledges, the world can still expect average temperature increases to reach about 4°C by the end of the century.

Meanwhile, representatives from the global business community are preparing to gather on the sidelines of the UN summit to reiterate calls for a global deal to tackle emissions.

"Businesses are already taking steps to reduce emissions and are creating the products that will power the low-carbon economy. But there is only so much that can be done without the international framework in place," said Rhian Kelly, CBI head of climate change.

"We need politicians to pave the way towards a full deal on emissions in 2011. That means we need to see two weeks of real progress in climate finance, technology co-operation and emissions reporting. We may not expect everything from Cancun, but we can't accept nothing."