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fter 11 full days of intense negotiations, the 20th annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change '€œConference of the Parties'€ (COP20) held in Lima, Peru ended with proposals deemed too weak by climate campaigners.

The results, which will lock us to at least 3 to 4°C, do not merely show a lack of progress in the talks, it proved that the convention could not offer the right solutions to the millions of people that are already being affected by climate change, like those in the Philippines and vulnerable small-island states. The process, in its current state, does not and will not offer appropriate actions to those who will be affected in the future '€” the whole planet.

COP20 will set the agenda for next year'€™s COP21 in Paris, wherein a new climate change agreement is intended to be finalized.

In Lima, very much like in the previous COP19 in Warsaw, rich countries and dirty industries dominated the agenda, fundamentally weakened the process by confirming complete dismissal to the needs of developing countries and those already being affected and blocked the path for energy transformation by preserving the role for climate-frying fossil fuels in energy production.

Before the Lima talks, two global events already generated deep concerns for many in civil society and developing country governments: the United Nations special summit in September held in New York, which was met by a 400,000-strong people'€™s march in Manhattan and a Wall Street blockade and the US-China deal on a new emissions-reduction timetable.

The New York Summit gave an even bigger role to markets in climate solutions despite the overwhelming proof that shows the gargantuan discrepancy between what is needed '€” rich country commitments for ambitious emission reductions and financial and technology assistance to developing countries to alleviate the social, economic and ecological impacts of climate catastrophe and the paltry offerings in the climate negotiations.

Despite major fiascos by the main carbon trading schemes in the European Union (which has suffered an 80 percent price crash since 2008), and the US (Chicago Climate Exchange crash in 2011), it is business as usual for carbon traders and they continue to earn profits while the planet increasingly warms.

The UNFCCC, sadly, was captured and largely subordinated to market mechanisms as alleged solutions to climate chaos. This is obvious in the big parallel meetings or side events organized by business during COPs and their increasing demand to have a direct say in the negotiations with a similar status as countries.

Concerted and aggressive lobbying at national level by supporters of '€œcarbon capture and storage'€ and carbon markets grew bigger between the Warsaw and Lima COPs. Business already strengthened its role in the four preceding COPs, in Poland, Qatar, South Africa and Mexico.

Dominant local and global industry actors co-presided or spoke in panels alongside the speakers from the UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretary Christiana Figueres (herself a former carbon trader).

The much lauded pre-Lima bilateral deal between the world'€™s top emitters US and China, may have negative consequences too.

Critical voices from civil society argued that the deal was neither ambitious nor historic since the targets are dismal and in turn already set a lowered goal for Lima.

Furthermore, it undermined multilateralism by drawing the world back to the idea that superpowers rather than multilateral agreements and equitable partnerships between states hold solutions to the world'€™s problems.

Social movements and NGOs had long argued about the Global North'€™s '€œecological debt'€ to the South and to the planet. They have exposed the false solutions offered by schemes like the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM), Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), carbon and pricing and now the climate smart agriculture.

Political energies are now being channeled to organizing locally and nationally to counter inaction from the UN and in their governments. Organizing globally for system change to address climate change is the way forward.

How many super typhoons and storm-related death does the world need to see? How many vulnerable communities need to be ejected from their location, families dislocated and their land grabbed after each catastrophe?

How much suffering by affected people and environmental destruction before the message becomes clear that those who created and are now heightening the climate crisis should have no place at the climate negotiating table?

Many of them are indeed in our national governments.

When and above all, how do we boot them out and keep them away from decision-making processes?