Countries were about to finish yet another climate change conference without any major breakthrough or significant step ahead towards the elusive agreement that could satisfy everyone.
In the final hours of the two-week long conference at this luxurious hotel in the picturesque resort town of Cancun, negotiators remained huddled in small groups in a bid to finalise the decisions that can be adopted by all the parties.
These set of decisions are likely to reflect nothing more than commitments of the countries to continue the process ahead into the next year. But, in an indication of how complex it was to reconcile individual interests of every country, even this exercise was not proving to be a smooth affair and the negotiators were burning the midnight oil to reach some sort of compromise language.
?Many of the delegates are half-asleep, but work is going on,? said a delegate from Bangladesh who was leaving the meeting room around midnight between Thursday and Friday.
Cancun was never expected to deliver the global and comprehensive climate treaty that is the objective of these talks. But even the hopes of making some substantial progress towards that end had been given up quite early at this conference which, perhaps, would be best known as the place where Japan dealt a body blow to the Kyoto Protocol by announcing that it would not agree to extend the only legally-binding climate treaty, any further than its present lifespan till 2012.
As it is envisioned, countries have to finalise six-seven smaller agreements, sort of building blocks that would make up the overall global and comprehensive treaty. These include specifying emission reduction targets for major emitters and finalising work programmes that will help people in adapting to adverse effects of climate change.
They also have to create a finance mechanism to fund all climate related activities, and a technology-sharing framework to ensure that poor and vulnerable countries have easy and cost-effective access to technologies that will help them in dealing with climate change. The countries also have to set up a mechanism that will disincentivise cutting down of forests and incentivise afforestation. And, not to be left out, a structure that will ensure compliance of all these agreements also needs to be created.
Of these, only the areas related to technology and forests has shown some substantial progress in negotiations. The others are all deadlocked.
The next conference will be held in Durban in South Africa around the same time in 2011, when countries are hoping that some concrete result can be reached.