Climate summit: Will Cancun succeed where Copenhagen failed?

After last year's disastrous talks, negotiators are giving it another go in Mexico

Cancun is home to the U.N.'s climate change summit, where negotiators will focus on narrow goals.
(Image credit: Corbis)

Negotiators from 192 countries kicked off this year's United Nations climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, on Monday, hoping to revive climate talks after last year's disastrous conference in Copenhagen. Unlike the 2009 summit, which had aimed for a broad international treaty on fighting global warming, the Cancun meeting will focus on smaller steps, such as establishing a fund to help poor countries adopt environmentally-friendly technologies and formalizing targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Can the Cancun summit make a difference? (Watch an al Jazeera report about the summit)

Absolutely. This could be a turning point: Cancun could be the place where "a global deal is put more within our grasp," says Lucy Brinicombe at Britain's Guardian. After Copenhagen, critics said the U.N. was too big to get anything done. But if negotiators at Cancun can determine how to raise $100 billion a year for a "fair climate fund" to help poor nations fight global warming, they will prove the naysayers wrong.

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