Day 2 in Cancún

We will meet this morning with local NG0s in Puerto Morales a few kilometres from where we are staying and from where the negotiations are being held. They will give us presentations on local REDD+ projects (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation).
Up to 20% of global C02 emissions are due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation but this is not directly addressed by the UNFCC and Kyoto Protocol.
The project we will see this morning centres on preserving the remaining existing mangroves, while developers have their eye on the area to build even more of the hotels for which Cancun is famous.
We will also discuss with NG0s how this whole issue is being dealt with in the negotiations, which centre on a mechanism to combat these emissions due to tropical deforestation and forest degradation, including incentives to leave forests standing.
The opening of the high level segment of the UN Climate talks takes place this afternoon (Tue).
REDD is one of the issues that is fairly advanced in the negotiations in terms of the practicalities, even though there are differences of opinion on how this should be approached. But of course 'balanced package' is a buzz word we hear again and again in Cancún, and if some groups of countries feel their issues of concern are not being addressed they may hold up progress on other issues until that changes, and this is happening with Saudia Arabia and REDD. Also, the ALBA countries in Latin America oppose links between REDD and carbon markets.
Mexican Chair of the UN talks, Ms Patricia Espinosa is trying an interesting way of seeing what might be possible on outstanding issues.
She has asked ten Ministers, five sets of two Ministers, one from a developed country and one from a developing country in each pair, to see what is possible on a given issue. They won't be calling negotiating meetings or producing texts, but will walk the corridors talking to people and getting a sense of what might fly. That will then go to a high level plenary session tomorrow that will also hear from subsidiary bodies that finished their work last week.
Ms Espinosa stresses again and again that there will be no separate or Ministerial process and no sudden production of hidden texts and that this is not what these pairs of Ministers are about.
The pairs of Ministers are:
Sweden and Grenada on matters related to shared vision; Spain and Algeria on adaptation; Australia and Bangladesh on finance, technology and capacity building; New Zealand and Indonesia on mitigation, including MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) and Britain and Brazil on items under the Kyoto Protocol. Other Ministers may be asked to take up other issues if needs be.
I heard the cynical view first that this was a way of giving Ministers something to do, but it seems now to be building on something that worked recently in the UN talks on biodiversity in Nagoya. We will know soon if it has helped unlock any thorny issues.
Meanwhile, on 'shared vision', another buzz word of COP 16, NG0s are critical that in spite of the possible progress on specific issues in these UN talks, an overall shared vision of where we want to get to is missing. Partly this is because there is no agreement yet on whether there will be a legally binding agreement even by next year. But more worryingly it is also because the steps that countries may agree this week fall far short still of where science tells us we have to be if we are to meet the challenge of tackling climate change.