The Last Night in Durban

by Samuli Sinisalo A lot has happened today, I hope. Everything that is going on takes place behind closed doors, so we have no way of accurately reporting it the play by play. The ministerial Inbada started just few minutes ago, and that will hopefully bring some clarity to the situation. So far there are two draft texts presented by the COP presidency, to conclude the work in Durban. Text from...

Who Are These Guys Anyway?

by Joe Perullo I decided to do some investigating on who exactly the country delegates were.  Who hires them? Who are they really representing? What do they do outside of the UNFCCC? When we say the US is stalling progress and shoving responsibility onto developing countries, who exactly do we mean?  A lot of fingers are pointed at the delegates, but they're just people, right? The US was my...

China Syndrome

by Nathan Thanki With the dirty details of week one out of the way, COP17 is changing gears into the high-level segment. Heads of State are coming to town, security is ramped up (execpt at our hostel) and the drone of talks about an outcome  becomes louder and more persistent. A lot off that buzz is around a Durban deal, the so called "Durban Mandate." Most of the noise is around whether or not...

Possible outcomes from Durban

by Samuli Sinisalo After one week of negotiations, what are some of the possible outcomes we can expect from Durban? The negotiations run on the two tracks: Kyoto Protocol and the Long term Cooperative Action. From the Kyoto track, there are at least four possible outcomes: 1) No second commitment period is signed and Kyoto Protocol is buried and forgotten 2) Negotiations for second commitment...

Julian’s Intervention

Yesterday Julian Velez, representing the youth, had the great opportunity to give an intervention during the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP), the main negotiating body that works under the Kyoto Protocol. The ability for civil society to give interventions is one of the only official avenues within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to express...