• Submitted by: manso
• International
• 12 / 03 / 2010

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By. Enrique Torres. jueves, 02 de diciembre de 2010. Cancun, Mexico, Dec 2 (Prensa Latina) Cuba expects concrete results from the Cancun climate summit, although it admits that negotiations are tense because they are associated with the economic development of countries, and the capitalists prioritize their interests.

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"We believe that the meeting should end with an outcome that enables us to continue moving forward with an international response to the consequences of climate change, which is not a challenge of the future; it is a challenge that humanity has before it right now," Pedro Luis Pedroso, vice director of multilateral affairs for the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told Prensa Latina.

Pedroso, a participant in the 16th UN climate change summit here, which began Monday and runs until Dec. 10, said the challenge does not just involve global warming, but also a whole number of phenomena around the world, including the food crisis and the health situation.

In his opinion, negotiations on these questions are complicated because capitalism puts its economic interests first, not global or community needs based on the principles and norms of solidarity and a much more social form of coexistence.

This is because it is a system built more for itself, for the preservation of very specific, very personal interests, and therefore it is a system that sees its very survival in danger, Pedroso commented after a round of talks in which the Group of 77 plus China defined its strategy for the summit behind closed doors.

After the fiasco at the Copenhagen summit, neither the developed countries nor the developing countries can give themselves the luxury of leaving the summit without a positive outcome, he said.

"We aspire to the most ambitious outcome possible, even if we know it cannot be attained; we must build a bridge between what we want to achieve and what is possible."

A basic starting point for the international community is science, taking into account what scientists are saying about the advance of climate change.

They must look at the phenomenon of global warming as a result of the patterns of production and consumption that are completely unsustainable, he said.

In that sense, he agreed with the views of other participants at the summit who, in their remarks, noted that the world is heading toward the exhaustion of the basic resources needed for human life.

Thus, "we do not only want to be, but must be optimists; we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of being pessimists," he emphasized, insisting that the danger is for humanity as a whole, without distinctions.

If decisions are not made, it is a ship on which everyone will sink, without any differences, and when the sea level rises two meters higher that it is now, and the glaciers disappear, it will affect all countries alike, he said.

Pedroso noted that while some nations will always be more vulnerable than others, it is the developing ones that are most at-risk, and among these, the small island states.

The recent massive forest fires in Russia were an unquestionable result of the consequences of global climate change, as were the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. city of New Orleans, considered one of the poorest of a rich nation.

It is a phenomenon that knows no economic barriers, which means we must construct an international response that is equitable, that response to the principles that are the foundation of the UN framework convention on climate change, Pedroso said.

Those principles include common but differentiated responsibilities, equality, and the need to respect the respective abilities of nations that are party to the convention.

At the Cancun summit, many calls are being made for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol; however, all signs seem to indicate that a new, binding document with greenhouse gas reduction goals will not be attainable until the next conference.

The next climate summit is set for South Africa in 2011, just one year before the protocol expires.

Source: PL