United Nations Climate Change Conferences: European Union, Brazil and Mexico's Messages from Durban to Lima

The EU’s strategic partnership with Brazil and Mexico highlights collaboration in the fight against climate change. The aim of this paper is to analyze the media diplomacy messages of the EU, Brazil and Mexico in the last four United Nations Climate Change Conferences (2011-2014), in order to see whether there has been a coordination or, at least, convergence of positions. The European Commission’s 2007 document proposing the basis for a strategic partnership with Brazil argues for the establishment of a common agenda and for a closer collaboration on several fronts. One of these is environmental protection and, as a part of this, the fight against climate change: the EU proposes developing and strengthening dialogue and working together in international fora, with the aim of achieving an agreement for a post-2012 global framework. In the case of Mexico, the European Commission’s document of 2008, proposing the basis for a strategic partnership, stresses that the main reason to establish the partnership is the greater consolidation of the coordination of both partners in the main multilateral fora and institutions. Environmental issues, including climate change, are among the main areas for coordination. In this sense, the document highlights that Mexico and the EU have adopted very close positions. The empirical analysis of this paper is performed from the perspective of media diplomacy, which highlights the importance of information and strategic communication actions, mainly carried out by political leaders and diplomats, in order to convincingly convey political messages to the media and public opinion. The aim is to analyze the positions of the EU, Brazil and Mexico in the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, and to evaluate whether there has been a coordination or at least coincidence in their positions, as foreseen by the strategic partnership. In order to perform the analysis, there is a thorough review of the proposals and postures defended by the three actors in the Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Durban (2011), Doha (2012), Warsaw (2013) and Lima (2014). The analysis is based on the speeches and statements pronounced in the COP and CMP plenary sessions, as well as on the Parties’ press briefings. The analyzed audiovisual material is available on the UNFCCC website, in the form of webcasts.