Climate Change Negotiations Update: Process and Prospects for a Copenhagen Agreed Outcome in December 2009

Abstract

This article provides an update on the status of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 3 months before the fifteenth Conference of the Parties is scheduled to reach an historic agreement on enhancing international climate change cooperation. It gives a brief overview of the process that is taking place under two distinct negotiating tracks and highlights the key substantive issues under the main areas of cooperation – namely mitigation, adaptation, technology and capacity building, as well as finance. It also briefly addresses the legal form of the outcome and outlines the main options for the post‐2012 legal framework.With only 3 weeks of negotiating time remaining before Copenhagen and a myriad of politically sensitive issues yet to be agreed and technical details to be addressed, it has become increasingly clear that moving the process forward will require a high‐level political compromise and that many of the details that will give the post‐2012 climate regime its shape will only be agreed after Copenhagen.