President Bharrat Jagdeo has acknowledged that there won’t be a legally-binding climate change deal at the current Cancun conference.

Addressing the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Wednesday, President Jagdeo said:

“We all accept – most of us reluctantly – that we cannot secure a global, legally binding climate agreement here. But what we can secure are decisions to make progress across a number of areas that advance our work towards such an agreement. We can make progress on addressing deforestation and forest degradation, we can make progress on the mechanics of a green fund to help invest in mitigation and in adaptation to help the most vulnerable, we can make progress on technology transfer and we can make progress on financing.”

He then went on to list three sincerity tests: commitment to securing a binding deal as soon as possible,  commitment to immediate action on financing for the developing world and commitment to being driven by science – specifically the analyses contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports – on global warming.