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 [...]

China’s emissions have risen sharply in recent years due to rapid industrialisation, fuelled chiefly by coal burning. In terms of national emissions, it has overtaken the US; its per-capita emissions are currently much lower, but rising quickly. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has recently put China’s annual emissions at 6.8 tonnes of carbon [...]

In advance of COP 17, the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Transitional Committee (TC) have passed the Parties a report, recommending it “take note” of the report’s findings. It is worth analysing this report since it  brings in to clearer focus the contrast between the expectations that some have for the fund – largely the private sector [...]

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits have been receiving plenty of bad press, with the latest being reports of human rights abuses committed in Honduras over the ownership of credit-producing land. This is particularly serious as the CDM has been set up to feed into the EU ETS, which means that CDM credits find their way [...]