A U.N. climate meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun is taking a low key approach to unblocking U.N. climate talks after last year’s much hyped Copenhagen summit ended acrimoniously.
Following are a comparison of the numbers of delegates at the two meetings, and of the costs of the U.N. climate talks in 2010 and 2009. The Cancun gathering of nearly 200 countries runs from Nov. 29-Dec. 10.
The Copenhagen summit was billed as the world’s best chance to agree a global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round ends in 2012, but ended with a non-binding agreement rejected by a clutch of countries on a bad-tempered final day.
The Cancun conference aims to agree on funds and approaches to preserve rainforests and prepare for a hotter world, and to formalise existing targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Delegates and observers
- Cancun, 2010: Mexican authorities expect up to 22,000 people, including 9,000 official delegates plus journalists, environmentalists and others
- Copenhagen, 2009: more than 45,000 delegates and observers
Cost
- The total cost of the U.N. climate talks, not including bills for many of the delegates, was about $238 million in 2009 and $82 million in 2010, or $320 million for the past two years combined.
- Cancun conference, 2010: cost about 841 million Mexican pesos ($67.33 million) to the Mexican government.
- Copenhagen summit, 2009: the Danish finance ministry said total costs were about 1.2 billion Danish Krone ($213.3 million)
- U.N. meetings: the United Nations climate change agency estimates that the cost of smaller meetings are about $5 million each. It organised five such meetings in 2009 and three in 2010.
