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

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.