Everybody has been waiting for the United States at COP15: Hillary Clinton declared on Thursday that they are ready to participate to the 100 billion $ worth annual fund to be raised by 2020, but still no definite figure has been announced. Today at 1 pm Barack Obama gave his speech to the plenary, but unfortunately he did not add anything new to the declared positions. He stressed on the transparency issue on national actions to warn China one last time that a deal without verification does not make any sense. Obama declared that he came to act and not to talk, but new action is missing and old words dominate in this exhausting chess game; things are still moving, but a strong deal is out of reach and more months of work will be needed to sign the new protocol.
The closing COP* and CMP** this afternoon will represent the final showdown trasforming the drafts into the results of COP15. But is what is on the table now enough, especially for the developing countries? drafting groups will have to discuss and write the terms and numbers of the agreement in the next hours. Here at Bella Center it is clearly perceivable how difficult the relatively new climate diplomacy is: like in all politics there is a fine line between words and facts, misunderstandings are all over the place and exterminate patience is a must. The Secretary General of the United Nations impersonate the persistent force needed for multilateral negotiations; the climate change threat does require to speed up the process not to let down billions of people now and in the future.
At least all leaders of the world are now concerned about the task, while China and USA were far from being so for too long, but the gap between reality and the actions required to tackle it is still very large.
Luca Marazzi
*Conference of the Parties
**Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol