EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Indian environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan at the center of the “huddle” on the last night of the COP17 negotiations in Durban, South Africa; Todd Stern, US Special Envoy for Climate Change, looks on. Photo: IISD

The enduring image from last week’s UN conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, was of negotiators “huddling” in full view on the plenary floor to come up with the form of words that allowed the final deal to be reached. The negotiators are in shirtsleeves, visibly tied at the end of talks that had run 36 hours past the deadline, and surrounded by hundreds of observers straining to hear the back-and-forth. At the center are the two protagonists (obscured in this picture): Connie Hedegaard, the EU Commissioner for Climate Action, and Jayanthi Natarajan, the Indian Environment Minister. Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, is offering suggestions and Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s foreign minister and host-president of the conference, is looking on. She made the extraordinary decision to interrupt the plenary negotiations and invite the main players to take ten minutes to come up with an acceptable wording on the legal form of a new treaty, to be negotiated by 2015. The ten minutes stretched to almost an hour but resulted in the breakthrough that carried the conference to a conclusion.

The picture stands in contrast to the iconic photograph from the talks in Copenhagen two years ago. Those negotiations took place in an even brighter glare of international attention because an unprecedented number of heads of state and government attended. The main outcome of the Copenhagen conference was hammered out in an impromptu summit of the leaders of the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China; the EU was not in the room and was acutely embarrassed by its absence and by its failure to achieve a deal on emission reductions that was sufficiently ambitious.

United States President Barack Obama sits with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and other world leaders during a multilateral meeting at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 18 December 2009. The European Union was not in the room. Photo: Jewel Samad

These pictures present contrasting images that are both informative and incomplete. In fact, Europe had much greater influence in Copenhagen than many of the media appreciated at the time – the final outcome of the Copenhagen conference contained much of what the EU had been pushing for. Its exclusion from the room was not deliberate but due to happenstance in the chaos of that final evening. Nevertheless, the denting of Europe’s pride was real, and EU negotiators, led by Hedegaard, invested every ounce of diplomatic capital they possessed to position themselves for a stronger, EU-led outcome in Durban. And the strategy paid off: The agreement in Durban marks the EU’s return to its accustomed place at the front of international leadership on climate diplomacy. It is also a welcome rapprochement between Europe and the United States on climate change.

At the outset of the talks there was a fear that divisions between Europe and the United States on climate policy could sour transatlantic relations. The EU combines ambitious domestic targets with calls for strong international cooperation and has made no secret of its frustration with the lack of U.S. reciprocal action. The 2001 withdrawal of the United States under President George W. Bush from the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States never ratified) was one of the low points of transatlantic relations last decade. The Obama administration is more favorably disposed toward action on climate change but it is constrained by the lack of domestic political support for strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The EU and the United States went into the talks with different agendas and expectations. Europe wanted to win agreement on a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement with teeth, whose provisions only run until the end of 2012. The United States approached this issue from what it regarded as a pragmatic position, which is that international treaties are really only a reflection of what countries are doing anyway and the emphasis should be on encouraging national policies. Nevertheless, the United States was not opposed to talking about future commitments, as long as big emerging economies like China and India were included. But the U.S. priority was to focus agreement on the creation of a Green Climate Fund and the other issues on the agenda since the Copenhagen conference in 2009.

At the beginning of the conference there were some predictions that China could seek to isolate the United States by keeping the conversation on the future of the Kyoto Protocol. But the U.S. delegation surprised many observers by lending its support, in the Thursday of the second week of talks, to the EU demand for a “roadmap” that would lead to a new international treaty. For all the expectations that these talks would not bring any progress on a central EU demand, the United States decided that it was not, this time, going to be the country seen as blocking progress. That role fell instead to India, which (with some historical justice) complained bitterly that it was being bound to constrain its emissions thanks to the profligacy of the developed countries. But India eventually acquiesced to a form of words (“a protocol, legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force applicable to all Parties”) suggested by Stern in the late-night huddle.

Even if the “Durban Platform” is not as ambitious as it would have liked or as the science of climate change requires, the EU successfully pressed the need for some kind of continuing international legal process that applies to all countries. This is the most important long-term result of the Durban outcome: the fracturing of the long-standing and artificial divide between “developed” and “developing” nations that obliges only the developed countries to reduce their emissions.

But the United States helped effect this outcome. By ceding to the EU the role of climate champion, the United States allowed this outcome to happen simply by not standing in its way. By the same token, however, the United States insisted on, and won, the point that developing countries must be included in any global approach. On both tracks, the Obama administration managed to avoid drawing fire from the conservative opposition back home, which sees political opportunity in anything that implies constraining U.S. economic growth or diminishing its competiveness with China. The EU negotiators know the Obama administration’s political constraints well and are sympathetic to them.

The result was a victory for the EU in its insistence for a renewed international recognition of the urgency of climate change. It is probably correct to say that a “legally binding” treaty on climate change is never more than a reflection of what is happening anyway. But the EU feared, rightly, that a commitment to do nothing before 2020 – which was the effective Indian and Chinese position – would have sent a disastrous signal to the world. In the mere fact of forcing an international recognition of a new regime by 2015 (which is tomorrow by the glacial pace of international talks), the EU vindicated its position on the talks in opposition to those who thought that such gestures were irrelevant.

BRUSSELS — Expectations are low at the beginning of the 17th annual United Nations conference on climate change that began this week in Durban, South Africa. The European Union and the United States have assumed contrary positions and even disagree over what would constitute a successful outcome. But, behind the talks, and despite that standoff, the threat of global warming continues to cry out for transatlantic leadership.

The talks themselves – which will culminate next week in three days of ministerial talks – are intended to add definition to the political agreements that were reached at last year’s talks in Cancun, Mexico, such as on a new fund to help developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But what will attract the biggest attention in Durban is the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty that binds industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by a certain amount by 2012. There is no provision for a second “commitment period” beyond next year, so the EU is calling for a sequence of actions to lead to a new treaty by 2015. The United States rules out a new treaty before 2020 and only if large emerging economies like China are similarly bound; Japan, Canada, and Russia have aligned themselves with this view. There seems to be no way to reconcile these two positions.

But Europe and the United States are divided even on the significance of this divide. Among the U.S. negotiators, and echoed in many Washington, DC, think tanks, the Kyoto Protocol (or any successor treaty) is seen as irrelevant to the climate talks. Instead, an effective response to climate change lies in vigorous domestic action by the big emitters. Many U.S. commentators consider the Kyoto Protocol an obstacle to progress because of its outmoded distinction between developed and developing countries and its zero-sum emphasis on legally binding emission caps. The EU counters that a legally binding treaty is the only way to bring clarity and to drive domestic action, and points to a growing chorus of international bodies – from the UN to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – that warn that we have no more time to delay action to reduce global emissions if the Earth is to have a hope of avoiding temperature increases that would change the face of the planet.

While the United States may think that the EU has tied itself to a sinking ship, Europeans visiting the United States express exasperation at the U.S. failure to grapple with climate change and at the prominence afforded to pundits who dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. It is common to hear European officials suggest that it is time for Europe to look elsewhere and focus on building cooperation with developing countries. But it would be a grave mistake to give up on the United States. The two continents, working together, have the political and financial capacity to drive global change through policy leadership and the market effect of their domestic policies. Disagreement threatens to hinder international action when there is no time left for delay, and to sour transatlantic relations, as seen in the brewing dispute over the inclusion of U.S. airlines in the EU Emissions Trading System beginning in 2012.

In Durban, the EU and the United States will probably manage to avoid an acrimonious falling-out. Memories of the rift in transatlantic relations following George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol in early 2001 are still raw. The EU is sympathetic to the domestic political constraints that U.S. President Barack Obama faces and the real actions that his administration is advancing, such as new regulations to control pollution from power stations and to improve efficiency standards in automobiles. Whatever deal is struck in Durban, it will probably be enough to allow the Kyoto Protocol to continue in some form without forcing the United States to denounce the agreement.

But outside the negotiations, Europe has a good story to tell about its response to climate change, and it needs to do a better job at persuading the United States to partner with it on this enterprise. In European capitals, policymakers are busy with plans to build new renewable electricity generating capacity, transform the electricity grid to carry the power, and train a whole generation of new engineers who can operate it all. The European Commission is preparing to publish a new “roadmap” for a low-carbon energy system by 2050, the latest in a series of policy statements and regulations since 2008 that are slowly accumulating momentum that could take the EU on a low-carbon trajectory. No conversation on anything like this scale is happening in the United States, nor is one expected until at least after next year’s presidential election.

The United States holds that international treaties like the Kyoto Protocol are less relevant than action on the ground. The EU thinks that such action on the ground is a result of the downward pressure of international commitments. Surely there is room to agree here on the outcomes, if not the cause? If the United States were to embark on an ambitious plan of reducing its emissions, and to lead international efforts to imitate it, the EU would be quick to agree that a treaty would be superfluous to this end.

Thomas Legge, based in Brussels, is a senior program officer for the German Marshall Fund’s Climate & Energy Program.

Image by Meraj Chhaya

WASHINGTON—Beltway insiders always love a scandal, and the bankruptcy of solar power cell manufacturer Solyndra Inc. makes for a good one. Solyndra received over $500 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy under a scheme to provide financing to promising companies in the renewable energy sector, before going bankrupt last month. President Obama, visiting Solyndra’s factory floor in 2010, had pointed to the company as an example of how the renewable energy sector could provide the next wave of innovation and economic growth in the United States. But Solyndra was already in financial difficulties. Its business model depended on an experimental and ultimately uncompetitive technology. The company nevertheless supplied upbeat assurances to the White House and members of Congress.

Republicans, smelling blood, have published a 15-page report linking Solyndra’s success in gaining federal backing to its political campaign contributions and lobbying efforts, and have used the episode to make a case against efforts to promote renewable energy in general. This line of argument is opportunistic — Republican members of Congress have been just as energetic in requesting government support for renewable energy companies in their own districts — but it is true that governments are not very good at picking winners. They risk embarrassment when they tie their fortunes to the success of any particular company. The problem is that the Obama administration is running out of tools to promote renewable energy.

The surest way to send a signal to the market to invest in renewable energy is to impose a price on carbon emissions through taxation or a cap-and-trade system, both distant prospects since the U.S. Congress failed to adopt a comprehensive climate bill last year. The administration has therefore relied on narrower or indirect mechanisms at its disposal to put a price on carbon, such as regulating greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. This approach is now under threat as the administration, vulnerable on the economy, softens or postpones measures that may be seen as hurting business

The other way to promote renewable energy is to support innovation directly, such as through the loan guarantee program that benefited Solyndra. There are good reasons why governments support innovation in the renewable energy sector. The private sector tends to under-invest in research and design because firms do not capture all of the profits that their innovations (quickly imitated by competitors) generate. It is also reasonable to expect some failures. Public subsidies for innovation are a kind of venture capital and the chance of developing breakthrough technologies is worth the risk of some duds. Subsidizing innovation and predictable policies like renewable energy targets could have a net effect of reducing risk in the renewable energy sector for private investment. In the European Union, legislation from 2008 requires one-fifth of energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, and complementary measures like the “feed-in tariff” (which guarantees a minimum price for electricity produced by certain technologies) reassure companies that they will achieve a return on their investment. The United States lacks such overall measures but its direct support for research and design — analogous to EU instruments like the Intelligent Energy – Europe Program and the Strategic Energy Technology Plan — provide a minimum level of certainty to companies.

The problem is that poorly designed policies on both sides of the Atlantic engender a different, political, risk. The Spanish government set an over-generous feed-in tariff for solar power in 2008, which caused a boom and bust in the sector and damaged investor confidence in feed-in tariffs as a policy. In fact, by temporarily driving up the price of silicon, the Spanish boom may have indirectly contributed to the demise of Solyndra, which depended on high prices of silicon to be competitive because its unique technology did not use silicon. The U.S. loan guarantee program required government officials to evaluate project proposals and determine which ones would work in the market. This may have made the process vulnerable to lobbying: Solyndra, unlike some other successful applicants for loan guarantees, spent heavily to petition support in Washington

Bad investments like Solyndra do not alter the need for governments to promote green innovation. Climate change is too urgent a problem to wait for innovation to happen on its own, and the hidden subsidies for fossil fuels and inertia of the existing energy system mean that green technologies will always be at an inherent disadvantage. But it is exactly this urgency that imposes a higher standard of performance on the renewable energy sector. Renewable energy will — and must — displace fossil energy, so criticism from powerful incumbents is inevitable. But at the same time, renewable energy company executives have an obligation to be cleaner than most because the perception of impropriety is so potentially damaging and government programs that support them must be seen to be beyond reproach.

Thomas Legge is a Senior Program Officer with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC.

Photo by jurvetson

WASHINGTON — Germany’s decision last week to phase out nuclear power has sharpened the differences between Europe and the United States on energy policy. Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman, a senior voice on energy policy in the U.S. Congress, led the chorus decrying that removing nuclear power from the energy mix would undermine global efforts to combat climate change because the technology emits much fewer greenhouse gases than coal or natural gas, the other main fuels used to generate electricity. The decision highlights an apparent contradiction: Europe is committing itself to a low-carbon future while it moves away from nuclear power, whereas the United States, a laggard on climate action, insists that nuclear power is essential to avoid climate change.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted to the crippling of the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan by immediately ordering the temporary closure of seven older nuclear power plants. She has since expanded what appeared to be a panicky sop to public opinion into a revised energy policy that will see all nuclear power stations in Germany closed by 2022.

In reality, the decision is a return to the status quo ante — a decision to phase out nuclear power by 2021 was adopted in 2001 by the then-coalition government of the Green Party and the Social Democrats. Merkel’s government went against the grain of public opinion (and the well-known views of her own environment minister, Norbert Röttgen) last September by prolonging the life of many of Germany’s existing nuclear power stations for up to 14 years. What many forget is that her about-turn brings her, and her Christian Democratic Union, into Europe’s political mainstream on this issue. The German public has largely opposed nuclear power since fallout from Chernobyl reached the country in 1986. And the trend across Europe is against nuclear power, notwithstanding official support in a minority of countries (France and the United Kingdom being foremost among them). At the same time, the EU is solidifying its plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent by 2050.

So if Senator Bingaman is right, and nuclear power is an essential part of the low-carbon future, why is one of the most pro-climate action countries in the world, one with a big industrial sector and heavy energy needs, ready to foresake it? The short-term answer is that it will make no difference. Germany’s emissions may rise as the country turns to power generated from burning fossil fuels, some of it imported from other EU countries. But greenhouse gas emissions from the EU’s power sector as a whole will not rise because they are limited by the EU Emissions Trading System, which sets a declining annual cap. The flexibility that allows one country’s emissions to rise while reducing the emissions of the EU region as a whole is one of the clever design features of the EU’s flagship climate policy. Germany’s decision could drive up the price of emission permits, but there is so much oversupply in the market already (the 2009 recession has meant that EU emissions are still down more than projected) that the impact on prices will be modest.

The longer-term answer highlights the differences between EU and U.S. ambitions and constraints on energy policy. Merkel’s justification — that the decision would make Germany “the first major industrialized country that achieves the transition to renewable energy” — is a bet on the ability of governments to force technological change. Germany hopes that the decision will send a market signal sufficiently strong to attract enough investments to make renewable energy technologies competitive. This might make sense. Innovation is essential to drive down costs, but it is often forgotten that costs begin to fall only when technologies are deployed at scale. The German feed-in tariff provides a recent example. It removed the risk of investing in renewable energy technologies like wind turbines by offering a minimum price for the power they generated; investors rushed to deploy more generating units than expected, and costs fell quickly, although they are still higher than fossil-fuel energy in most cases. The promise of the big German market for renewable energy could help new technologies pass from the design phase to market acceptance. Removing nuclear power from the options further strengthens the signal to the private sector to invest in renewables.

The United States is much less likely to forsake nuclear power. Nuclear power will be an essential part of any political deal on climate and energy policy in the United States. Unlike in Europe, there is still generally strong support among the American public for nuclear power. This fact, coupled with the strength of the nuclear lobby and the precariousness of any political coalition that could muster the votes to pass a climate bill, means that nuclear power will be part of that coalition.

Europe, led by Germany, seems to be choosing a political future around the promise of renewable energy and hopes to push innovation in that direction; it sees nuclear power as a distraction from that goal. The United States, for reasons of domestic political economy as much as faith in the technology, will not make a similar choice.

Thomas Legge is Senior Program Officer in the German Marshall Fund’s Climate & Energy Program.

CANCUN — It is hardly news anymore when international talks on climate change fail to produce a breakthrough agreement. But the real story of the annual UN climate conference, which concludes Friday in Cancun, Mexico, is what was happening on the sidelines of the conference.

Last year’s summit on climate change in Copenhagen was ruined by the weight of excessive expectations and unbridgeable gaps between developed and developing countries. The talks did not quite break down — the Copenhagen Accord was a face-saving agreement that allowed the talks to reconvene this year — but they were traumatic for all involved. The global media saw, in the failure and fallout of Copenhagen, not just a setback for the climate negotiations but a deep crisis in multilateral cooperation.

This year, the Cancun meeting has benefited from exceedingly low expectations about prospects for progress in negotiations toward a new climate treaty. Anything short of a blow-up of the conference Friday evening will be seen as a success. Cancun should manage to exceed that low bar, and that has led to a lighter tone to the whole conference. Officials have been largely upbeat, and certainly polite. There have been no dramatic walkouts and few angry denunciations of proposed texts.

Yet the conference will not bring the world any closer to an ambitious climate agreement. In some respects, the talks have left the world further from that goal. Japan created waves on the first day of the meeting by announcing that it would not agree to emissions targets for a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol (the first commitment period expires at the end of 2012). This may be a case of being chastised for admitting the obvious: There is no appetite among industrialized countries for legally binding targets while big developing countries like China and India are not bound to them, but Japan has broken ranks with Europe by saying so aloud.

Connie Hedegaard, the EU Commissioner for Climate Action and a champion of ambitious measures on climate change, acknowledged that talking about a legally binding and controversial climate treaty was not helpful because it would block progress on slowing deforestation and financing to help countries adapt to climate change, areas where agreements at Cancun might be possible.

And developing countries remain deeply suspicious of the intentions of the rich world. As the deadline for the conclusion of the talks approaches, the number of issues that divide countries remains hopelessly large. The negotiations could well conclude with vague language to delay decisions until next year’s climate conference in Durban, South Africa, because the alternative — acknowledgement that countries had failed to find a deal — would be even more embarrassing for negotiators anxious to avoid a replay of Copenhagen.

But to concentrate on the thin legal outcome of the negotiations is to miss the larger significance of the UN climate talks. Much has been written about the inability of the United Nations to deliver an adequate international response to the threat of climate change. On the surface, this is true. The talks seem to struggle from conference to annual conference, endlessly returning to the same issues—how to share the burden of actions across rich and poor countries to tackle climate change—and creating an ever-more complex yet ineffective legal framework. Even if there is agreement in Cancun, it will take a decade or more for the talks to produce a new international treaty with commitments and targets to match the challenge of catastrophic climate change. In frustration, many observers have called for negotiations to move to some other, smaller grouping of nations where unanimity between 184 countries is not required.

It would be wrong to suggest that the UN negotiations don’t matter, however. The real action is taking place on the sidelines of the climate talks. Cancun is like a huge trade fair where entrepreneurs and government officials present their latest initiatives and ideas to promote renewable energy, integrate “green growth” into national economic strategies, and set up emissions-trading programs at the local, national, or regional level. A recurring theme is how these initiatives could be connected to each other in an expanding worldwide network of actions to tackle climate change.

All this is happening — climate change has not gone away as a political priority for many local and national actors — largely because of the UN process. The annual UN conferences, supported by an international network of scientists and amplified by media attention when the ministers arrive for the high-level segment of the negotiations, provide recurring reminders of the wide gap between countries’ official pledges and the measures that will be necessary to reduce greenhouse gases to a reasonably safe level.

Finally, the conferences are a kind of peer community and capacity-building network where ideas are born and reviewed. The legal framework of the UN climate convention has the potential to provide a set of minimum standards that could help knit disparate initiatives together into something that could, in time, approximate a global effort to tackle climate change. A weak deal between ministers in Cancun will not save the climate, but this headline should not detract from the progress that is the real relevance of climate diplomacy.

Thomas Legge is a Program Officer for the Climate & Energy Program at the German Marshall Fund.

CANCUN–Kermit the Frog knew it all along: Green is cool. And it seems that more and more humans, in particular those working on climate change, are beginning to follow his logic.

While the negotiations at COP16 in Cancun still promise to deliver some results by the end of the week – notably on deforestation efforts in the developing world and financing – it is clear that whatever will be agreed upon won’t be enough to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, which scientists have set as the rough limit to avoid disastrous climate change. And the question remains if countries will even deliver on the commitments they have made in Copenhagen last year and might agree to in Cancun. However, there is a new issue that might be infinitely more compelling to countries than the dry UN-texts that they are expected to sign: Green growth is the new kid on the block. In its simplest terms, green growth means that countries choose to invest in renewable energies such as solar, wind or hydropower to meet their energy demands, rather than building coal plants and using fossil fuels such as oil and gas. What is compelling about this is the fact that investing in green growth helps reduce CO2 emissions while at the same time allowing countries to develop and/or sustain their current level of development. And a nice side-effect is the fact that it would make countries less dependent on the import of fossil fuels.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), focused on exactly this issue when she addressed the NGOs in Cancun. Rather than talking at length about the negotiations and where they might be going right (or wrong), she explained in a very compelling way why going green is the way forward in her eyes. She outlined how green growth will not only help us fight climate change, but also help poor countries find their way out of poverty in a sustainable way. Figueres wants the international community to start working on the ground in developing countries and help them develop by implementing green technologies, rather than just analyzing sustainable development on a theoretical level. She demanded that the developed world follows the green development path and sets examples to see how it can be done and that businesses step up and invest more in green technologies.

Figueres’s sentiment has been re-stated throughout the week by heads of state and governments and ministers. Be it the Norwegian Minister for Environment Erik Solheim, or Mohamed Aslam, Minister of Housing and Environment of the Republic of the Maldives or President Saakashwili of Georgia, all acknowledge that green growth is the way forward. While Saakashwili explained that green growth can ease tensions in the Black Sea Region, Solheim focused on the fact that there just isn’t enough energy in the world at this point to lead all poor nations out of poverty, and that green technologies are a way out of that dilemma. Minister Aslam of the Maldives just stated plainly that as they saw no other choice, they might as well lead by example. This shows how compelling the idea of a green development path is for countries around the world. They understand that investing in green technologies has an intrinsic value for their nations’ self-interest; be it geopolitical, be it a matter of becoming less dependent on energy imports, or be it a matter of survival.

What is most interesting about all these statements is the fact that green growth has featured so prominently in the climate negotiations. It shows that the climate change debate has moved forward toward real and practical solutions. More and more countries seem to understand that as long as a legally binding international climate deal is absent, investing in green technologies might just be their next-best option. Europe has been investing in renewable energies for decades, China is set to dominate the world market on wind and solar energy and India is determined to catch up with the Europeans as well.

The mood among negotiators and the drive of more and more countries and businesses to look at renewable energies could be a real opportunity: Investing in green growth will not only help the climate – it will also create jobs and revenue and help businesses stay competitive in the 21st century. If politicians around the world set the right framework and businesses step up to the challenge, then green will indeed become the new black. Kermit will just wonder why it took us so long to get it.

LONDON/ISTANBUL — When disaster strikes, whether it is a hurricane, a flood, or a tsunami, the people affected need assistance—and they need it fast.  If there is a positive byproduct of these catastrophic events, it is the potential to bring people, nations, and countries closer together. So was the case last weekend when Israel faced the worst forest fire in its history.

The fire at the northern forests of the Carmel Mountain, near Haifa, claimed the lives of more than 40 people, scorched nearly 12500 acres of scarce Israeli forest, and destroyed hundreds of houses in nearby populated areas. It took nearly four days and an international force of more than 20 countries to assist the Israeli Emergency Authorities to fight the fire. At the exact time that hopes for peace negotiations are at a standstill, the international operation at the Carmel Mountains created practical, regional cooperation beyond the Middle East conflict. This unique event ought to be maximized.

Among the many countries that contributed to efforts to contain the fire were Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey.  Indeed, Turkey initiated aid to Israel in spite of current strained relations between the two countries. The Palestinian Authority sent additional aid without any expectation of something in return.  These human acts of solidarity emphasize that, in spite of fundamental political disputes and severe mutual mistrust among regional players, regional cooperation is not only a matter of vision, but also a matter of motivation. The Carmel fire and previous regional disasters reiterate that humanity trumps politics every time, and real cooperation at times of crises becomes a matter of political necessity.  Though tragic, this occasion must now serve real diplomatic opportunities.

The first opportunity is already taking place. Eyes are now set toward Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and whether they can repeat, even modestly, the Turkish-Israeli version of Papandreou–Cem’s earthquake diplomacy from 1999.  Then-Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and late Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem’s interaction led to a long-term Turkish-Greek rapprochement. They could not have turned a disaster into a diplomatic opportunity without three elements: vision, willingness, and leadership.

The second opportunity is the multilateral one. In 1994, NATO established the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) in order to enhance security around the Mediterranean Sea and to increase cooperation between the transatlantic alliance and several neighboring states — Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The MD offers both bilateral and multilateral consultation fora, training, joint exercises, and coordination to the partner states. Civil Emergency Planning is one of the MD’s priorities. But the MD is far from reaching its potential. The known secret is that political stalemates in the context of the Middle East conflict prevented from the MD from moving forward. A lack of transatlantic leadership was also missing.

Using the MD framework as an enhanced and pragmatic cooperation platform could serve as an assistance tool to be used in future disasters. It could also serve as a confidence-building mechanism between NATO member states and regional players, and between the regional states themselves. If done right, the basket of “beyond the conflict” regional cooperation will become available as well.  Energy security, environmental themes, trafficking, and counter-terrorism are only a partial list of the potential cooperation measures spelled out in the MD.

Reviving the MD also correlates with Turkey’s “zero problems” foreign policy strategy for the region that emphasizes its role as a bridge between the West and the East. The recent tensions between Turkey and the West in the context of Iran could also find a backchannel for reconciliation by promoting the MD.

Only a few weeks ago in Lisbon, NATO committed itself to deepening its cooperation with the Mediterranean Dialogue. The vision is already in place. The practicalities were already demonstrated on Carmel Mountain. It remains to be seen who would demonstrate the willingness and leadership to advance the Alliance’s role in the region through the Mediterranean Dialogue and be better prepared for the next disaster.

Shirley Salzman is a Non-Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and Özgür Ünlühisarcikli is the director of GMF’s Ankara office.

CANCUN – Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s remarks yesterday in Cancun were attended by an expectant international audience clamoring to hear the latest official word on what Washington intends to do about global warming, despite roundly subdued expectations of the U.S. and the UN process both. Although one might have expected to hear boilerplate remarks on positive efforts by the Obama administration to tackle climate change, the audience was treated to a different kind of oddly familiar speech: Secretary Chu gave what felt like a lecture in a college freshman course entitled “Climate Change 101,” complete with colorful PowerPoint.

His tone was reassuringly professorial; calm, matter-of-fact, but not pedantic. For almost thirty minutes, Secretary Chu explained the principles of global warming science: the earth’s rising temperature since 1880, satellite measurements of Greenland’s ice mass loss, and how changes in the ratio of radioactive and non-radioactive carbon in the atmosphere prove that human activity has definitely contributed to the problem.

Only halfway through the presentation did Secretary Chu switch to talking about the administration’s actions on climate change, from $90bn in stimulus money going to renewable energy and efficiency projects, to high risk-high reward ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy) projects, to support of innovation hubs à la Bell Laboratories.

One might be puzzled as to why the Secretary chose such a forum to talk about climate science instead of focusing on actions being taken in the U.S. and making a qualified appeal for international cooperation.

Surely he doesn’t feel the need to educate the broad international collection of environmentalists, negotiators, and wonks who attend international climate negotiation conferences. The sensitive in the crowd might even balk at being given a climate science redux by the head energy bureaucrat of a country that has not accepted the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming.

It seems similarly unlikely that he aimed to address a U.S. audience. He wouldn’t need to come to Cancun to do that, not to mention that half the country has already decided not to believe the science anyway.

So why did the Secretary of Energy decide to talk about climate science in Cancun? To try to show the world that there are people at the highest levels of government in the U.S. who get it; not just in terms of job creation or energy independence that can be sold to the American public, but on the hard science that the rest of the world accepts and still desperately wants the United States to understand.

The climate change negotiations in Cancun started into their second and last week this morning. Ministers are beginning to trickle in and the President of Mexico has arrived. With the politicians arriving, the final documents of the COP –UN speak for the climate negotiations- will have to be finalized any day now to then be agreed upon by the politicians. Writing this, I am sitting at the GMF booth in the Cancun Messe, where all the NGOs have taken up shop and the negotiators come by to see what’s what before going on to the Plenary and Working Sessions, which take place at the Moon palace Hotel, a few miles from the Messe. It is palpable how the buzz of activity has picked up since last week –the halls are full, and people from all over the world are walking by. It may be for the beautiful weather and the no-tie policy, but there definitely is a sense of optimism in the air. People do actually seem to believe that the ministers will be able to sign a document of some sort by the end of the week. Talking to a senior negotiator from an African country this morning, he told me how pleased he was with the progress in some areas of the negotiations, in particular on issues relating to the Least Developed Countries. However, he also warned that more needed to be done on capacity-building, which includes technology transfer as well as financing, if developing countries were to agree to a text.

Could that statement point to a dark cloud on the otherwise sunny Cancun horizon? Will developed and developing nations split on the issue of their respective rights and obligations, on -frankly speaking – who should pay for the mess, as they did in Copenhagen? Is this, yet again, going to be the crux of the talks? To be sure, Europeans and Americans have been suspicious about the developing countries all year. Courtesy of Wikileaks, we now know of talks as early as February between European Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Jonathan Pershing of the United States on exactly this issue. According to the cables, Pershing said that the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) were opposed to turning the Copenhagen Accord into a binding agreement. And both were skeptical about whether India and China would honor the commitments they made in the Copenhagen Accord. Clearly, trust for the BASIC countries wasn’t at an all-time high.

At the same time, developing countries have reason to mistrust the developed world. The Wikileaks report reveals that Hedegaard and Pershing also talked about one of the most important, but also contested issues: Financing. In Copenhagen, the developed world agreed to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020, and $30 billion from 2010-2012 (the so-called “fast-start financing”). While both Hedegaard and Pershing agreed that finding the funds pledged in Copenhagen was essential, Hedegaard asked Pershing if the U.S. would need to do some “creative accounting” to come up with the money. While Pershing did not confirm this, some observers in Cancun say that this is exactly what is happening. When last week the EU outlined the details of its 7.2 billion Euro contribution between 2010 and 2012, questions remained how much new money was contained in that pledge. NGOs and poorer countries were also alarmed by the fact that loans rather than grants are to make up about half of the money.

It is clear that the developed and the developing world still have to do more to rebuild the trust which was lost in Copenhagen. While progress on the negotiations has been made, the negotiators will have to work hard with their ministers to agree on a text that will give hope for a more comprehensive agreement at COP17 in South Africa next year.

Last December, right after Copenhagen, Herman van Rompuy’s chief of staff said, when asked about the possibilities for Cancun: “Who wants to see that horror movie again?” Let’s hope that the talks end up not being a horror movie, but rather a mirror of the weather: Sunny and pleasant.

Cancun, December 4, 2010–The mood at Cancun could not be more different from last year’s annual conference on climate change, which took place in Copenhagen. Even the setting of the Cancun conference—a beach resort in tropical weather—conveys a more mellow kind of international climate conference than Copenhagen’s freezing temperatures and hot tempers last December. Getting through the formality of accreditation is fast and efficient. Queues are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the most striking thing is how few people have come to Cancun – about 5.000 so far, compared to almost ten times that number last December. More delegates and observers are expected next week when the ministers arrive, but the lower level of participation reflects lower expectations about what this conference can achieve.

Surprisingly, this might actually help the conference. The Copenhagen talks were ruined by a combination of too-high expectations and insuperable gaps between developed and developing countries over the major issues that will forever define the problem of climate change: who should take on the burden of avoiding climate change and who should pay for this effort. The talks almost broke up in total disagreement before a group of heads of state—from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China—cobbled together a face-saving agreement. The so-called Copenhagen Accord is unloved and, to many, lacking in ambition, but it has allowed discussions to continue over the core issues that must be part of any new global agreement on climate change. They include: targets for developed countries, measures that developing countries should take, a goal to limit global temperature rises as a result of climate change, protection of forests, adaptation to the effects of climate change, money to pay for these measures, and standards to hold everyone to account.

The Mexican hosts are setting a tone conspicuously different from Copenhagen’s. Last year, some delegates walked out in protest at a “secret” text that was drafted by the Danish hosts. There was some posturing here: at almost every negotiation a roughly representative group of delegates draft a text at around this point for ministers to consider when they arrive for the second week of talks. But there was a real feeling among some delegates, especially from smaller developing countries, that they were locked out of critical talks contributed to the fallout of talks. This year, the hosts have repeated a mantra of inclusiveness, active participation by all, and—above all—there is no secret text!

The question is, is the atmosphere positive, or just polite? There was no lack of graciousness today at the end-of-week plenary session to take stock of the talks. Speaker after speaker thanked the Mexican chairwoman for her skilful facilitation and opined that the prospects were good for significant advances in Cancun. But issues may boil up again next week. There are fundamental gaps between the developed and developing countries. And the statements of Bolivia and Venezuela that justice was missing from the talks got scattered rounds of applause. In the end, any deal will have to be teased out by closed-door negotiations among a small group of countries: The United States said as much when its representative said that countries “direct discussions” with each other in order to bring talks to a fruitful conclusion.

Finally, there’s another reason why the conference seems so quiet. Observers usually mingle with official negotiators, but this year the two groups are kept far apart. Observers are not officially excluded from the halls of negotiations, but there is a long and cumbersome bus ride in between. The UN climate talks have traditionally offered a remarkable level of access to observers. It would be a real shame if one of the legacies of Copenhagen’s unhappy conference was a decline in the openness of the process.