Blog: UN climate change negotiations, Cancun, December 2010

Day 4: 2 December - Thursday's cocktail of issues

Sense of direction?

So where is Cancun heading? From discussions in the corridors it still appears that there is considerable uncertainty about what the parties are negotiating towards and that the Conference of the Parties (COP) Presidency is coming under significant pressure. Certainly it does not seem at this stage that a silver bullet has been identified to unlock the discussions, and many long-held views have been repeated in recent days. There are also concerns that discussions between the Mexican Presidency alongside the formal negotiations do not derail the formal negotiations in the same way as happened at Copenhagen. This seems like a tough call for the Mexicans - on the one hand they face the risk of discussions moving on far too slowly without such. On the other hand, as witnessed at Copenhagen, even if such negotiations do lead to an "outcome", the legitimacy of that outcome is likely to be thrown into