The last COP in Durban ended in a success for the UNFCCC process, but has more nebulous implications for the climate itself, with Kyoto put on artificial respirator and a more comprehensive agreement being pushed back to a later date. [...]

Much work has been – and is currently being – put into agreeing on the format of the much anticipated Green Climate Fund (GCF), a facility that would funnel public and private money to tackle both climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

One of the purported successes of the talks in Cancun last year was the creation of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This year the GCF’s Transitional Committee (TC) was created, with forty members, twenty-five of which are from developing countries. The TC is tasked with no less than designing the GCF itself. It must be [...]

While Ontario’s ambitious feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy is being put to the test by domestic and international opposition, including a challenge from Japan, Japan has just achieved a major breakthrough for its own FIT policy as it continues to recover from the tsunami and nuclear disaster this past March. Both examples will have implications for renewable [...]

Guest Editorial by: Matt Williams, UK Youth Climate Coalition The UNFCCC process has been mired in something of a quandary since the high hopes around Copenhagen in 2009 were quickly dashed when countries failed to come up with a second global, legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol (due to expire in 2012). But [...]

Questions of statehood and statelessness are generally laden with controversy and emotion, yet with Pacific islands such as the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) at risk of becoming gradually uninhabitable and entirely submerged under rising seas, along with losing their sovereignty and lucrative marine rights, there is an urgent need for legal solutions. Solutions [...]

The UN Climate Change Conference kicks off this week in Bonn, Germany as governments continue framework discussions in preparation for the Seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP17) to be held in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year. Over three thousand participants representing 183 countries are attending the conference in Bonn from June 6-17, [...]

Citizens from small island nations in the Pacific Ocean have known for decades that their geographic isolation, heavy coastal infrastructure, population dispersion across many islands, and low-lying atolls only meters above sea level make them the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world. However, now changes in the global climate are accelerating, and [...]