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Last week I wrote about my hopes for the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen and my experience, as Environmental Secretary, of the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

My hopes were disappointed. Much of the Copenhagen meeting was marked by chaos and the failure to reach the kind of agreement which so many millions of people thought was needed was very frustrating.

One of the causes was the difference between the Copenhagen meeting and the one at Rio 17 years ago. At Rio the main agreement, the Climate Change Convention, was largely agreed in advance. Preparation is almost invariably the key to a successful international meeting, particularly at very high level. The work of preparation simply had not been properly done in the run-up to Copenhagen and so the outlook for the meeting was always problematical.

Perhaps all is not entirely lost. There does now seem to be near universal recognition by the nations of the world, if not their citizens, that action needs to be taken to deal with man-made carbon emissions and readiness on their part to put at least some of the necessary actions into effect.
There is to be another meeting in Mexico next year, hopefully better prepared, and we must all hope that it will be more successful.

The failure at Copenhagen was all too typical of an unhappy year. So many things have gone wrong. Perhaps the symbol of 2009 will forever be the memory of so many passengers on Eurostar trains, stationery in the Channel Tunnel, miles beneath the sea. What a miserable experience for them – and for us, as Operation Stack came into force yet again and our local road system was once more gummed up in consequence.

So many of these difficulties constitute challenges which we will, collectively, have to face in 2010.

Not only climate change but the economic crisis, also, is still with us. The outcome of the war in Afghanistan remains problematical. The task of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons remains as difficult as ever. The future of Pakistan, which already has nuclear weapons, is itself in question.

Locally, the challenges of continuing with the regeneration of our area will still be with us. And so will the need to find an alternative to Operation Stack without constructing a lorry park at Sellindge.

This may not sound the like ideal backdrop for a Happy New Year, but hope springs eternal.

And if some, at least, of these challenges can be met we may well, in a year’s time be looking back in 2010 with a kinder eye than it is possible to turn on its predecessor.

Sandra joins me in wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.