The 2nd Berlin Climate Law Conference, convened 15 June 2009 at the International Club Berlin, provided an important opportunity to reflect on the state of global climate negotiations. Organised on the heels of the June climate change talks in Bonn, the Berlin conference offered a timely and informed reflection on recent climate change legal developments in anticipation of Copenhagen and beyond. Mr. Wolfgang Andreae, the Lexxion Publisher and host of the Berlin conference, noted the significance of this timing in welcoming delegates who attended the Bonn negotiations, concluded only several days earlier, and the other participants spanning Europe, North America and elsewhere internationally, many of whom are following or will participate in the Copenhagen process.
The conference chairs, Professor Michael Rodi, Chair of Public Law, Financial and Tax Law at the Ernst-Moritz- Arndt-University of Greifswald, and Michael Mehling, President of the Ecologic Institute, Washington, D.C., invoked the conference theme – On the Road to Copenhagen: Legal Aspects of the Post-2012 Debate – in underscoring the many critical issues being debated in the ongoing international climate negotiations. Many of those issues were reviewed and discussed during the Berlin conference proceedings. Dr. Ursula Fuentes-Hutfilter, a Senior Advisor with the International Climate Policy Division of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, reviewed progress made and challenges remaining from the Bonn meeting. She described the progress achieved in refining the draft negotiation text and noted that the positions of the many developing and developed country constituencies were becoming more focused.