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COP17 climate change progress: cause for optimism
Dr. Tony La Viña is Dean of the Manila Ateneo School of Government in the Philippines, as well as a world renowned expert on issues related to Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and a REDD+ facilitator. His areas of expertise are climate change, biodiversity, biosafety policy, genetic resources, and trade & environment.
Commenting on the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) blog, La Viña feels that one should remain optimistic about progress made on climate change during COP17.
While acknowledging that there is some truth in skeptical comments such as "the agreement is too weak", "the governments have failed us again", "why don't they get it? Shame on them!" and "I have never seen a climate change agreement I have liked", La Viña warns that concluding that the Durban results are inadequate or even bad does not mean they should be rejected. "This explains why many countries, including our delegation from the Philippines [...] stated they were unhappy but still agreed to adopt the package," says La Viña.
Governments cannot and should not leave these climate change conferences without a result "to do so, [...] would damage, even doom permanently multilateral efforts to address climate change [...] that is why one should always aim for the maximum, not the least, common denominator." La Viña's preliminary post-COP17 analysis "is that in fact we made progress in Durban [...] When I am asked if I am depressed about the results of Durban, my answer is an emphatic no. We did have a result and made some progress."
Read the full article on http://blog.cifor.org.
