While Addis Ababa was by no means an unqualified success, it was not a failure, which bodes well for both the SDG debate and the climate change CoP. A major row in Addis might well have derailed both of the subsequent meetings.

I am one of those who views the SDG’s as a qualified success. True, there are too many goals and way too many subgoals, but the alternative was much more depressing. When I served with Jim Balsillie on the Secretary General’s panel on sustainable development, we fought very hard to prevent the proliferation of goals being promoted by the ILO, UNDP, FAO and others. And we fought to integrate sustainability into the successors to the MDG’s. Both of those seem to have stuck.

These goals, if they are adopted, will serve to further integrate the development and environmental agendas at the international levels. And the multilateral and bilateral agencies seem to be lined up behind them, holding out some hope that the development agenda may be less scattered than before.

I also have the impression that the Busan principles are taking root in the development assistance agencies.

The multilateral trading system continues to founder, with the prospects for the upcoming WTO Ministerial pretty dim. The Director General has turned out to be a poor choice to run the organization, being more part of the problem than part of the solution. They continue to flog the Doha horse, which seems to me far more dead than alive and even the Trade Facilitation agenda does not seem to be advancing by leaps and bounds.

The main game is being played out at the regional level, with the Canadian and U.S. negotiations with Europe proceeding slowly. The TPP has become one of Obama’s major legacy issues and approached a decisive, perhaps do or die, moment in September before reaching agreement. On balance, TPP is probably a good thing, although its effects on NAFTA, among other agreements, remain unclear.

The multilateral system is in a parlous state.

There has been major progress in a number of areas. The U.S./China deal seems to be real and both have set themselves fairly major emissions targets. It would seem that the Chinese leadership have under-promised, as is their custom. A recent CIGI paper states that China could actually reach its stabilization by 2020 (more likely by 2025), rather than the vague 2030 promise contained in the President’s statement. And President Obama seems determined to make a serious effort in Paris.

We know from experience that international environmental negotiations tend to fail without at least U.S. acquiescence to the consensus and only really succeed when the U.S. is supportive. An issue which had no champions in Copenhagen now has three in Xi Jinping, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor was the Chair of the first CoP in Berlin, when she was Environment Minister. She knows the issues well.

The real danger for Paris is that expectations have again been raised too high. Although the French have been attempting to inject a note of realism into the preparations, expectations are once again sky high. When all of the official commitments are added up, they will be much higher than the minimum needed to stay within the 2C target agreed on and signed by the parties in Copenhagen. The IEA, OECD and the IPCC have repeatedly reminded the international community that we have very little time to cut emissions to achieve the agreed target, and there is a likelihood that the media and civil society will be very disappointed by Paris.

Nevertheless, there is a good possibility of a decent agreement that will lead to greater cuts in the future. The renewable energy industry seems to have survived the drop in oil prices. Many developing countries (India and Indonesia among them) have use the drop in oil prices as a means to dramatically cut energy subsidies and to release substantial funds for other development purposes. The private sector and the financial community are increasingly committed to action and seem to have realized that the economy of the future is one where less carbon is released. Finally, this is no longer an exclusively North/South issue. Major domestic policy reform is now underway in China, India and Brazil. And even in Africa, the low carbon shift is beginning to gain significant traction in places such as Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as South Africa.

The major unsolved issue remains financing for the transition away from coal and oil and the potentially enormous costs of adapting to climate change in the South. This powder keg has the potential to derail the entire conference.