Yesterday the word came down from one environmental group: The latest deforestation text was out at the climate talks in Cancun, and all but a few outstanding issues had been resolved, paving the way for a deal by the global environment ministers that take over this week. A deal on deforestation could come as early as today, we were told. “Not so fast,” warned an email from another environmental coalition this morning. And then comes a story in the Telegraph warning that the deforestation talks might be falling apart.

It’s hard to tell if this is represents a deterioration in the deforestation talks, a knock-on effect of ongoing disputes in other arenas or the inevitable tendency for detractors to raise their voices as consensus builds. Part of it might be a question of how far the agreement can go this year, versus how far it needs to go.

As discussed in our earlier coverage, it is possible that agreement on smaller issues could be blocked by disagreement on the big ones – namely who is responsible for doing what and when and how all of this should be spelled out in the Kyoto Protocol or another international agreement. That dispute continues today. But there have been positive signs as well.

—

China has softened its position on international verification and apparently even suggested that it might be willing to submit its pledges for inclusion in a binding treaty. China’s staunch opposition to standing behind its numbers has always served as a source of confusion, given that the country is doing quite a lot to clean up its act (for the latest news on that front, check the World Resources Institute here and here).

How all of this will play out over the course of the week is anybody’s guess, but there is increasing recognition that the process itself – long criticized – is in danger of altogether losing its credibility. Such fears and frustration’s are understandable given that a handful of countries can block progress on anything. In the case of the deforestation text, many are pointing the finger at Bolivia, a country that played a significant role in blocking the Copenhagen accord last year and has perhaps the most radical demands on the industrialized world.

Bolivia is objecting to the idea of allowing industrialized countries to use carbon markets to offset their emissions by paying for forest protection, but this is not new. Although advocates talk about the need to attract money from eventual carbon markets (under the theory that governments have neither the will nor the capacity to provide the kind of regular funding that is needed), it was never expected that the detailed mechanism for allocating money would be pinned down this year.

Contrary to Copenhagen, the goal going into Cancun was to make incremental progress. That seemed doable at the time, but nobody is taking anything for granted today.