Recalling last week’s benchmarks for the success of REDD+ negotiations at COP17, we can take each in turn and assess state of the negotiations on each topic. As expected, much of the discussion has been focussed on the MRV text (and addendum) from the SBSTA, which has now been presented to the COP for adoption this week. [...]

A week into the Durban conference, progress on the continued workability of the Kyoto Protocol emissions trading mechanism is slow. A number of parties to the negotiations have acknowledged that action needs to be taken to tackle the surplus of Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) in the international emissions market. [...]

With the Durban climate change negotiations barely a week old, key countries are drawing their “red line” positions in the sand. On one side of the line, where the Group of 77 (G77) + China and other developing countries firmly sit, is a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol that continues binding targets for current country signatories after the first period expires at the end of 2012 (excluding Canada, which has announced that it is pulling out of the treaty altogether). On the other is a European Union plan for a new global agreement with binding targets for all countries beginning in 2015 and in force by 2020. [...]

On Monday, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada “will not make a second commitment to Kyoto.” In addition, Canada will no longer take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and may begin to formally withdraw from the agreement next month. In place of the Protocol, Canada’s goal is for “a new international agreement, eventually binding, which would include all the major developed and developing emitters.” [...]

The fate of the Clean Development Mechanism, the most robust and successful United Nations’ instrument to fight climate change, hangs in the balance at the 17th Conference of the Parties. It risks being used as a negotiating ‘chip’ in the penultimate COP before the Kyoto Protocol’s (KP’s) first commitment period ends. A leading climate change NGO explained that the KP is expected to ‘emerge alive from the conference, but it will be on life support.” [...]

As the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC kicks off in Durban this week, negotiators hope to build upon progress made during 2011 to govern the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) more effectively. Coupled with the positive sentiment that has been seeping from recent negotiations en route to Durban via largely pre-negotiated texts, progress is expected but expectations remain low [...]

Heading into Durban and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as the Seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP-17), the G77 remains committed to its long-standing position of achieving a legally binding agreement. Given the ongoing stalemate between developed and developing countries, however, many media accounts say they are unlikely to achieve it anytime soon [...]

With the United Nations Climate Change Conference due to start on 28 November, emissions trading is a key topic due for discussion in Durban. As one of the three Kyotomarket-based mechanisms seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, emissions trading has emerged as a crucial weapon in the arsenal of climate change mitigation at the international level [...]

REDD+ is one of the building blocks for a new international agreement, and like other blocks, such as finance and technology transfer, it is one that many observers are hoping will become operational relatively soon, perhaps even in absence of a post-Kyoto agreement and the merging of the AWG-LCA with the AWG-KP [...]

Adaptation to climate change, a topic largely covered in this forum in recent years, is back with a vengeance in the march towards the next Conference of Parties (COP17) in Durban, South Africa. Back with a vengeance mainly because of the growing gap that seems to develop between the need for – and the supply of – adaptation solutions and funding [...]