Nothing, as they say at UN conferences, is agreed until everything is agreed. But as the climate conference in Cancún runs into its final hours, delegates are confident that at least something has been salvaged from the diplomatic wreckage.

A text laying out an agreed framework for sending billions of dollars a year to tropical countries so they can protect their forests has been agreed in working groups and only has to pass the all-powerful plenary, where over 190 nations must give it the final stamp of approval.

The scheme, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), was held up by disputes over safeguards designed to protect biodiversity and the rights of forest dwellers, including indigenous tribes. Brazil, in particular, is said to have fretted that the wording of the text infringed their sovereignty.

Conservationists and defenders of human rights appeared confident the REDD text would be approved by the plenary and claimed a victory, though a lot of detail has still to be worked out. "We have some good material banked, and we can now move on to more detail," said John Lanchbery of Birdlife International.

However, one major issue on REDD is unresolved. Some nations, headed by Bolivia, want the funds for REDD to come from governments alone, while others such see money from corporations buying carbon offsets as the main driver for the scheme. Bolivia says this would be tantamount to "selling mother nature". Delegates have so far only agreed to postpone that decision for another day.

Postponed to Durban

Elsewhere progress has been slower. The conference is likely to postpone decisions on a number of crucial issues left over from Copenhagen to the next summit – in Durban, South Africa, in November 2011.

They include the future of the Kyoto Protocol – the only framework currently on offer for legally binding emissions targets for nations. With Japan, Canada and, from Thursday, Russia saying they will not accept new targets after the existing ones expire in 2012, the survival of the protocol hangs by a thread. Most developing nations would not accept any deal that did not include a renewal of the protocol.

Brazil's chief negotiator Luiz Figueiredo told journalists that delegates are likely to agree only to continue negotiations on an agreement that would avoid a lapse after the existing rules expire in 2012.

Campaigners were pleased to see the "gigatonne gap" between emissions pledges made so far and the cuts needed to keep the world below 2 °C of warming specifically addressed. The agreement is likely to "urge parties to address the gap".

That might not look like much of an advance. But for European governments, for whom recognition of the gap has in recent days become a key negotiating demand, it represents success. As Lanchbery, a veteran of many such conferences noted, "American negotiators can go home with nothing achieved and it doesn't matter politically. But Europeans have to be able to take something, however small, home and claim to have made progress."

In the bizarre world of climate diplomacy, increasingly adrift from the recommendations of scientists, such wording counts as a victory. (By Fred Pearce )

Source: NewScientist

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