Tag Archives: climate talks

The start of the COP21 climate talks on Monday mark the end of the beginning for global climate action: a decisive step forward. Or, to put a more pessimistic slant on it, the beginning of the end of a stable climate. But why be pessimistic? Sure, there’s certainly a lot of heavy lifting to do between now and Dec. 11, but no Conference of Parties has begun with so many members …

A first step on the road to Paris – Last week the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced that important progress had been won on the road to Paris, where, at the COP 21 climate conference later this year, the goal is to reach a binding global climate treaty. Any hope of achieving such a pact rests in the hard work of participants in a series of …

The 20th Conference of the Parties – COP 20 – opened yesterday in Lima, Peru. The meeting builds on the work done over the past 5 years in the aftermath of the disappointing Copenhagen Accord of COP 15 in Copenhagen. The major hurdles of building an international post-Kyoto Protocol climate treaty, primarily the issues between developing and developed countries, scuttled any real progress in …

The final round of negotiations in preparation for the COP 20 climate conference got underway yesterday at UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn, Germany. Set for December in Lima, Peru, COP 20 is an important stepping stone to forging a new universal climate agreement in 2015 at COP 21 in Paris. The “October session” aims at giving countries the opportunity “to further develop a cohesive text …

Many are once again disappointed with the outcome out of this year’s climate negotiations, but as with previous years, we did manage to salvage an agreement at the eleventh hour.  At the end of the first week of negotiations at COP 19, it looked like the climate talks would remain deadlocked, but as has often been the case, we saw a breakthrough only after …

Even going in with low expectations, there is a profound sense of disappointment in Warsaw as the COP19 climate talks wind down. On Thursday, representatives from more than 800 environmental groups, NGO’s and civil society walked out of the meeting hall in protest of the lack of progress in Warsaw. From the start, ambition was flagging among developed countries for curbing global greenhouse gas …

Despite the expectation that we will see progress on climate finance, there are a number of people who are cynical about the outcome of COP 19. Every year around this time, as we settle in for UN climate talks, an army of pundits come out and tell us why we will not see anything of great consequence from the negotiations. They usually end up …