The Way to a New Deal on Climate Change

In a few months, on 7 December 2009, 195 countries will meet in Copenhagen with a common mission: to find a way out of the climate change crisis. The Climate Change Conference –COP15 in UN jargon– aims to lay the foundations of a post-Kyoto agreement that provides workable solutions for a problem that threatens ‘to lead to some impacts that could be abrupt and irreversible’and undermine global security.

This key meeting on the international agenda will coincide with one of the worst economic crises in living memory. What began as a financial crisis with its epicenter in the US has evolved into a world economic crisis that threatens both developed and emerging countries with a deep recession. This economic context, together with the geo-political tensions that always emerge around the issue of energy, adds a high degree of uncertainty to the negotiations that seek a solution to the complex puzzle of climate change.