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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]