http://www.indianexpress.com/news/little-clarity-ahead-of-climate-meet-at-cancun/696149

With less than two months to go for the year-ending annual climate change conference — this time to be held in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun in November-December — there is little clarity on what the meeting should realistically aim to achieve.

Unlike last year in Copenhagen, when the goal of reaching a comprehensive and global agreement on climate change was the stated objective till the very end — notwithstanding the fact that everyone realised it was not going to be possible — the countries this year have very divergent hopes from the meeting. Some just want a set of decisions to come out of the meeting while others are hoping for a more ambitious outcome.
Against this backdrop, the ministers of the four large emerging economies — Brazil, South Africa, India and China, which together have formed a powerful bloc known as the BASIC group — on Monday met in the Chinese city of Tianjin to discuss their strategy for the meeting. A joint statement issued after the meeting said the Cancun conference must aim for an outcome that would pave the way for a global legally-binding agreement at the next meeting in South Africa in 2011.