Political leaders from poor, emerging and rich countries will meet in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December to face a truly global challenge: climate change.

The main expected goals of the summit are the identification of binding targets for the post-Kyoto period (from 2013 onwards) and the inclusion of reluctant and/or emerging countries in fighting climate change. Despite the urgency of this fight and the alarms from the scientific community, negotiations for such ambitious goals are anything but easy and, as a consequence, the outcome of the summit is still a conundrum.

The Policy Brief intends to provide criteria for a fair evaluation of the expected results of the summit and include them in a revised governance of climate change based on a global vision (i.e. the creation of a single carbon market). These criteria can help judge the summit a success, a failure, or something in between.