Until the very last moment, the conference in Cancún teetered on the brink and many feared that the disastrous result of last year’s meeting in Copenhagen would be repeated. But unlike last year’s conference, which started off as “Hopenhagen” and then ended in big disappointment, the negotiators managed to reach an agreement in the Mexican coastal city. The mere fact that an agreement has been reached is one of the most important outcomes of the conference and it underlines that the multilateral UN-led process to tackle the global climate change challenge is not dead yet.

The Global Progressive Forum (GPF) is a common initiative of the Party of European Socialists along with its political group in the European Parliament, and the Socialists International. The GPF sprang up from the success of the first World Social Forum held in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, in Brazil.