Despite local security concerns, the COP16/CMP6 conference began on a positive note Monday.

The 12-day meeting, held this year in Cancun, Mexico, will attempt to reenergise efforts to reach an international treaty on global warming. COP16/CMP6 is the 16th edition of Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) and the 6th Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP).

Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, conference president and Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs, said that delegates must launch “a new era of effective global action to combat climate change, a new stage in which the international community truly moves beyond deliberations and onto actions.”

Denmark’s climate minister Lykke Friis insisted that the conference will prove the issue of climate change was not “put on ice in freezing Copenhagen (in 2009), that it has succeeded in rebuilding trust… and it has managed to reach a level of expectations that can actually bring results.”

The former COP president added that this year delegates must advance positions outlined in the Copenhagen Accord, a document signed at the COP15 in Denmark last year to pledge multilateral funding for developing countries and reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Executive secretary of the convention, Christiana Figueres, said that compromise on the part of all participating countries is essential if talks are to bring about positive action: “Governments can reach a deal to launch action on adaptation, technology transfer and forests, and they can create a new fund for long-term climate finance. Governments can clarify what to do about the Kyoto Protocol, and how to anchor the many national targets and actions that many countries have put forward, in particular, the targets of industrialised countries.”

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