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| Sustainable? |
I am part of my country´s climate negotiations team and that is why I will in Qatar for two weeks: to attend the international negotiations which start tomorrow.
Road to Nowhere?
The Doha Development Round with a focus on trade started in 2001 and has been a disaster ever since. Now the name "Doha" is often used as a symbol for hopeless paralysis. Some wonder whether Doha in 2012 will mark the road to nowhere for the climate negotiations.
I do not think we will end in disaster. Most countries take climate change very seriously.
It is time to challenge conventional wisdom that you have to choose between development and climate responsibility. (Or that we are "too poor" to do anything, most middle income economies, including Costa Rica, can and must do more. The amount of wealth creation in developing countries is unprecedented and this is the time to avoid the mistakes that developed countries made in the past).
Here is the UNEP Emissions Gap Report explaining the gap between where emissions should be in 2020 and the lever they are heading towards even if we implement current climate pledges. I was part of the Report´s Steering Committee and given how much work and dedication when into producing it, I hope it will make a difference - at least in terms of our moral imperative. My personal opinion is that need to expand the boundaries of political imagination so we consider the stakes of failure more explicitly (and domestically) so we are held accountable visibly for not turning these meetings into a force for change.
Here is the official photo of the Convention center where we will be for the next two weeks.
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| The Power of Imagination |
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| A time for reinvention in Qatar? |
