Cancun is Big from the Moon

I’m sitting here inside Moon Palace at COP16, the heart of the climate negotiations, on the final day of the Cancun conference.

It’s an eerie feeling, the place is packed to the brim, but at the moment almost all national delegations are locked up in negotiation rooms.

Everyone is on their laptops, frantically checking their phones for any updates or breaking news. The press linger hungrily around the entrance points, hoping to catch that glimpse of a world leader.

No one is certain what will happen. No one is even certain if this conference will finish at the scheduled time.

Parties worked throughout the night, and a huge amount of persistence and dedication has gone into just ensuring a conclusion to this conference is in sight.

Here at COP16, it’s a world unto itself. Everyone can sense the magnitude of this moment.

For even though expectations were low and ambitions modest in this conference – these are purely relative to the immense overarching problem of climate change.

Individually, these issues currently being negotiated are huge.

They involve the future of the world’s tropical rainforests – and the livelihoods, cultures and species that rely on them.

The future relationship between the Global North and the Global South is being  determined, and $100 billion a year is what is currently at stake and being discussed in meeting rooms at this moment.

The issue of helping vulnerable peoples affected by climate change adapt to the new harsher planet is furiously being negotiated as I write.

The momentum and direction of climate negotiations and actions is being created right now.

The credibility of the UN as an able body to act on the world’s greatest crisis is on the line.

Though modest in ambition compared to last year’s fateful Copenhagen summit, Cancun is still an important moment in history.The balanced package that is sought may be a small step in ‘solving’ the looming crisis, but they are necessary and will play a role in determining the future for billions of lives.

Today is important as the required outcomes are so urgent.

I know that over the last two weeks people in Cancun have lived in a little bubble. Wikileaks bores us, yet excites the rest of the world into frenzy. Why care about one charismatic computer geek with a chip on his shoulder against the US? The future of the entire planet and its entire people – our collective future – is at stake.

I guarantee you, in 10, 20, even 50 years from now, Cancun COP16 will be in more history textbooks than Julian Assange. (Or Oprah visiting Australia – seriously, I am so embarrassed about my home country’s media at the moment).

These next few hours will decide how Cancun is described in those textbooks. It will decide how the UNFCCC is remembered and how future climate change conferences will be judged.

It will decide our generation’s legacy – could we agree over the ‘small’ things, or were we just too ineffective at working together?

I could spend days writing down the conflicting, confusing and convoluted thoughts I’ve had on Cancun over the last few days. But like many people waiting inside Moon Palace at the moment, I’m just too tired to even move.

My point is simply stressing that despite lack of media coverage, despite the apparently boring issues being dealt with, despite the modest expectations and at best, relatively small gains to be made, this moment here at Cancun is huge.

This moment is huge for the gentleman from the Congo whose family was suffering; the girl from Haiti whose life has already been impacted; the child from Germany who wanted a more peaceful world; the Canadian who wanted his children to live a better life than him; the local taxi driver who described COP16 as a “wake up call”; the Philippine youth whose homes are already drastically different to what they were five years ago; the Australian who had experienced a increased intensity in bushfires and droughts in only his short life; the Nepalese man who cried as he spoke of how powerless he felt; the boy from Belize who simply said “my life is real, and so am I”; and the hundreds of young people gathered in Cancun to plea for their future.

The weary crowds of people are starting to move now, and meeting rooms are opening up. Cancun is coming to a close, and I hope that this moment has not been missed.

Photos by Linh Do.