I have analyzed in detail what happened with the major players in Copenhagen in my last book, “Copenhague Antes e Depois”.
The most important lesson from Copenhagen was that leaders will commit globally to what they have negotiated domestically, not the other way around. This means that the goals and commitments of a global agreement have to be politically approved at the domestic level beforehand. Only then can they be more significant than those decided in Copenhagen. Only when these commitments become domestic laws will they have a better chance of being implemented and enforced. A binding global compact without a corresponding set of national laws is very unlikely. Look at the Kyoto Protocol. It is an international law, but is it really binding? What power ensures its enforcement? The European Union is ahead of the rest of the world because it has a binding domestic program for emissions reduction in force.
What we can expect from Cancun is progress focused on some areas, building a bridge for more objective future talks. No real change is likely to happen before the global economic disequilibrium is effectively addressed. No country, or group of countries, will make further commitments at global meetings, before they approve them domestically.
It is unlikely that president Obama will be able to negotiate any meaningful climate change bill with the recently elected Congress. We’ll probably have to wait to see whether he can get re-elected. Once re-elected, and if the economic situation improves, he may have a new chance at persuading Congress to vote a climate change bill.
It is unlikely that President Dilma Rousseff will be more supportive of environment and climate change policies than she was as Lula’s all-powerful chief of staff and chief policy coordinator.
There are no new facts that would lead the Chinese leadership to change attitude in Cancun. And nobody really knows what may happen to Chinese global climate change politics when a new leadership, under the presidency of the Xi Jinping, comes to power in 2012.
All major players have reason to keep the same position they had in Copenhagen. It is unlikely that Cancun will go any farther than Copenhagen did. It will probably be a “bridge meeting”, one that takes us, more or less unharmed, to the next season of negotiations.
