Climate Change Conference in Cancun a success

carlos fuller

In December of 2009, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark.   This past week, the follow up conference moved to Cancun and was attended by two hundred national delegates and thousands of others in science and related fields. It should have ended on Friday, but the closing session didn’t finish until early Saturday morning.  But according to the delegates who attended it was worth the wait.  Carlos Fuller, the Deputy Director of the CARICOM Climate Change Center in Belize, said that when the Foreign Minister of Mexico presented the final draft, the delegates gave a five minute long standing ovation for what was a very successful conference. Well, what happens in Cancun does not always stay in Cancun. Fuller spoke to News Five via phone today about all that was accomplished.

Via Phone: Carlos Fuller, Dep. Dir., CARICOM Climate Change Centre

“Cancun ended up to be a very successful meeting. The conference adopted a large decision some thirty pages long that address many of the issues to importance to the Caribbean region. They included the recognition that every country needs to significantly increase the amount of emission reductions that they need to do to ensure that global warming is kept below two degrees Celsius. Eventhough that target is higher that target we advocated for, in 2013 we begin a review of that target and consider the one point five which CARICOM has been advocating. It also makes significant decision on reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and provides sources of funding for development and implementation of national strategies on forest emission monitoring and reporting.”

Jose Sanchez

“For a country like Belize, what does it mean when it comes to uses of things such as chlorofluorocarbons, fossil fuels and even the own acts that we do in development that cause sedimentation on our own reef? What must we do?

Via Phone: Carlos Fuller

“It does call for all countries including Belize and it suggests and recommends that countries such as ours; develop low carbon development strategy, that we try to use as much renewable energy, that the country has available to it. So that is there and it also provides support for the development of the strategies and implementation of it. So certainly that is an area that we can benefit from. In adaption, a lot of the severe weather events: flooding, droughts that leads to sedimentation in rivers that go to reef. Again funding is provided for us to develop adaptation actions to minimize impacts as much as possible.”

Fuller says that financial issues were also addressed. A thirty billion dollar green fund has been created which will be governed by a board of governors from developing countries.  The funds will be used for various climate change projects.