Both opponents to climate action and activists for a global response to global warming stepped up their protests and pressure on delegates from the world’s nations, who continued to talk into the final hours of COP 17 in Durban.

As the high-level negotiators get down to business at the United Nations climate summit in Durban, the world is awaiting the outcome.

With the global economy facing its own set of challenges, many analysts have predicted that a major break-through on a deal to limit global carbon emissions is unlikely. Nonetheless, many observers still hold out hope that significant progress might be made on a more limited range of issues, including the possibility of some intermediate process that would create yardsticks for the negotiations over the next several years.

China and Canada (not to mention the U.S.) are making headlines for their COP 17 positions, while many of their citizens have traveled to Durban to seek climate progress.

The COP 17 climate change conference in Durban is entering a second week of negotiations with higher-level envoys entering the stage.

Could there be hope for progress in the second week of COP 17 climate negotiations? Discussion of a “road map” to future agreements draws discussion as the conference heads into the weekend.

We need decisive and clear action by all governments that will promote economic development through low-carbon choices, as well as concrete efforts at Durban to build partnerships for international action.

At a first communications session at the UN climate talks, experts agree: The uncertainty inherent in climate science makes it challenging to tell local, personal climate change stories.

On everyone’s mind is whether the Kyoto Protocol, the first international accord to limit greenhouse gases, will be extended or allowed to lapse, leaving the world without a regime to slow global warming. It’s an important question… but the wrong one.

Delegates are arriving in Durban, South Africa, as another United Nations climate change conference gets underway, amid sobering science reports, calls to “occupy” the talks, pleas from the Pope, and even deadly floods in the host province.

Based on the history of negotiations, expectations in the media are admittedly rather low for this 17^th Conference of the Parties – or COP as it’s known – of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But the urgent need for concrete progress on the world’s shared climate problem is spurring representatives from more than 190 countries to meet for the next two weeks to seek some kind of agreement to limit the world’s collective carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on December 11, the morning of the Cancun Agreement.

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on the morning of December 10 — the final day of the global talks.

With less than two days left of the UN climate talks in Mexico, country delegates appear close to agreement on at least one important area: forests

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on the morning of December 8.

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on the morning of December 7.

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on the afternoon of December, 6.

Here’s what’s happening at COP 16 on the morning of December 4.

Here’s what’s happening at COP16 on the morning of December 3.