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. [...]

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 [...]

Article by Guest Contributor: Adalberto Maluf The fourth meeting of the BASIC country ministers (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) on climate change took place in Rio de Janeiro on the 25th and 26th of July 2010 to further discuss their common positions regarding the Copenhagen Accord. The BASIC countries were part of the final [...]

Fever is rising for Copenhagen, as delegates and key global players in the climate field descend on the Danish capital in readiness for the official opening of the 15th Conference of the Parties on Monday. Expectations have rollercoastered in the last few weeks, with negative sentiment peaking when it was plausible Obama would not attend [...]

Just in time for the UN summit in New York next week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned earlier this week that due to the Senate’s busy schedule it might not act on a comprehensive climate change bill until 2010. Health care and regulatory reform are also high on the Senate’s agenda, and according to [...]

Ed Miliband hailed the G8 Declaration as a “real breakthrough”. For the first time, it seemed, the ‘Outreach 5′ states were putting aside their differences on international mitigation action and joining the G8 to commit to a 2 C warming target. However, in India these moves have not been universally accepted or endorsed, suggesting that [...]

Manmohan Singh recently argued that annex 1 countries should provide 0.5% of GDP to help developing countries reduce emissions, and that India would not collaborate with inspection of their emissions unless this rose to 0.8%. It seems that conditional bargaining chips are all the rage these days in climate negotiations, after the EU’s offer of [...]

The leading think-tank Chatham House held a conference on Monday and Tuesday this week, entitled “The Politics of Climate Change Agreement”.  There were some high-level speakers, including Joan Ruddock (DECC minister), the head of UNEP, and the chief negotiator of Papua New Guinea (he who told the USA to “show some leadership or get out [...]

Those hoping the G8 would achieve a breakthrough in Climate negotiations, would only need to look at the history of the G8 to know it is often more like an extended press conference for the G8 countries to touch base and put out some symbolic gestures on the issue of the day, meanwhile the real [...]

Environmental issues are central to the new government’s plan. Refusing to sign up to “any legal commitments or binding, mandatory targets on climate change”, Jairam Ramesh, the new Environment and Forests Minister reiterated that India will stick to its own climate change initiative: the eight national missions announced in the NAPCC last year. Perhaps reacting [...]