Day four of COP16 brings new communication methods and ideas

Day four of the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) in Cancun carried on the week's discussion topics of funding, and how best to help vulnerable nations.

Following last year's extravagant announcement of a USD$30 billion Fast Start Fund by 2012 and a USD$100 billion Green Fund by 2020, the UN seized the opportunity while at COP16 to call for a global tax.

Radical environmentalists at the World Wildlife Fund are pushing the taxing scheme calling for "wealthy and poor governments [to] unite on [a] new source of funding to fight climate change" because it is a key component that would "unlock the financing puzzle at the center of the negotiations" by unlocking "major flows of climate finance."

The UN's global taxing scheme would be unlimited in scope and unlinked from national treasuries. In November of this year, the UN Secretary General's High Level Advisory Group confirmed that taxes on international shipping and aviation could raise at least USD$100 billion. The International Maritime Organisation would be the tax assessor-collector charging for emission permits and/or fuel taxes.

Only developed nations would have to pay taxes, whereas developing nations would receive rebates for their portion of goods shipped.

Elsewhere, UNICEF dealt with the effects climate change will have on young people. As many young ambassadors are unable to make it to Cancun, UNICEF organised a series of communication technology initiatives, so that world leaders and governments could hear from all those who wish to be involved in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks.

The starting point is a series of local and national events on climate change coordinated by young people. The outcomes of these meetings are then sent through communications, such as various social media platforms.

One example of creative use of social media and technology stems from Zambia's capital, Lusaka, and Mongu, a rural town in that country's Western Province. Through UNICEF's Unite for Climate initiative, which raises the profile of young people's ideas about climate change, specially trained youth journalists from these two locations have produced a series of radio features and podcasts which illustrate how climate change has affected their lives. Workshops intended to inspire similar programmes are also being organised in partnership with the Children's Radio Foundation in Kenya and South Africa.

In his podcast, 15 year-old UNICEF Climate Ambassador Luyando Katenda asks world leaders: "to make responsible decisions for the good of all and to make the world a better place to live in. I hope that COP16 shall bring hope of us having a better future."

Gerrit Beger, leading an innovations team at UNICEF, said: "We need to use the expertise and fresh thinking of young activists in more strategic and sustained ways to find local and global solutions to climate change. Media, social networks and digital tools provide opportunities to share experiences, develop initiatives and tell the stories of how climate change affects the lives of young people, often adding to other challenges in developing countries."

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, acknowledged on Friday that the threat of failure appears to be gathering force each day at COP16. She said: "I don't see the possibility of ensuring a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in Cancún," the Costa Rican diplomat told TerraViva in a press conference on the status of the talks.

Figueres spoke at the end of a day filled with rumours of extreme conflicting issues in negotiations. The situation became even more heated at the Moon Palace Hotel as non-governmental organisations such as Third World Network, Friends of the Earth and the International Forum on Globalisation said that a secret text exists and the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, would present it to the environmental ministers.

This document, whose existence Figueres and delegates denied, reportedly stipulates the replacement of the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005, with the Copenhagen Accord, which came out of the COP15 held in 2009 in the Danish capital - which does not include obligatory greenhouse emissions cuts for the signatory nations.

"The implications are significant because it's an agreement that is dangerous for the world. We haven't seen responsibility being assumed by the developed countries," Kate Horner, Friends of the Earth activist, told TerraViva.

It is hoped that delegates will be able to resolve conflicts as the final week of COP16 begins.

Author: Charity Knight | Climate Action

Image: Paolo Mazzo | flickr