As people of the world look forward to three, four or even five degrees (centigrade) of warming in the next 50-100 years, one observer at the conference noted that...
Countries are mainly influenced by the corporate sector and civil society has very little interaction or influence there....According to the author this is what mainly occurred at the recent U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change:
Developing countries wanted a new institution and framework to deal with loss and damage, but the U.S. was opposed to any new institution. The compromise is for a “new mechanism” to be created in 2013.
A new second phase of the Kyoto Protocol will run from 2013 to 2020. Getting this second phase or commitment is considered very important by developing countries because it has hard-won legal terms that commit countries to making cuts as well as methods for measuring and verifying emission levels.
However, only the European Union, Australia and a few other countries are involved, representing just 12 percent of global emissions. The U.S. has never participated, while Canada and Japan have opted out of the second phase.
