How did the United Nations climate talks in Durban, South Africa, leave work on the details of global climate policy, such as adaptation, reducing deforestation and climate finance? Read updates on promising decisions, and some that will require much more work, from the Conservancy’s climate policy experts.

The annual United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Conference, COP17 for short, is taking place this week (Nov 28) and next (week of Dec 5) in Durban, South Africa. Check out the official COP17 web site here: http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/ The Nature Conservancy is at COP17 to demonstrate how natural solutions can help fight [...]

The world is not used to hearing good news out of United Nations climate negotiations. Yet the agreement reached early Sunday morning in Durban, South Africa, has potential to truly be significant. Not for the immediate steps it will take to save the climate or its level of ambition – it falls way short on both [...]

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA — After negotiations that lasted into overtime by an extra day and night, governments from 194 countries meeting at the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa have agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon emissions. They also established a pathway that should lead to a more ambitious global framework for reducing emissions, and have opened the Green Climate Fund to assist developing countries’ efforts to address climate change.

“These agreements are important steps forward for global cooperation, yet it is clear that the outcomes in Durban fall well short of meeting the urgency of the climate challenge,” said Duncan Marsh, international climate policy director at The Nature Conservancy.

The closing hour for the COP 17 climate change summit has come and gone, but the parties have agreed to keep negotiating on Saturday morning (that’s around 2 am Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.) Media reports were somewhat encouraging Thursday in that the U.S. and some other nations appeared to be signaling increased flexibility [...]

Much of the media attention has focused on the high-level talks in closed-door meetings at the United Nations climate summit, but these annual conventions also serve to mobilize people, enabling networking, the exchange of creative ideas, and the search for symbols to inspire the challenging work that lies ahead for all nations in response to climate change.

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.

Durban must bring the new international Green Climate Fund to life. There is nothing less at stake this week than the food, water, jobs, and security blankets of millions of families throughout the world.

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.

I stood at the 18th floor window – with a dense fog and warm rain blowing in off the Indian Ocean – wondering about how different the planet will be for the next generation.

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

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to present some remarks on the latest UN Human Development Report, Sustainability and Equity: a Better Future for All.

The Human Development Report has been produced for 21 years now, tracking progress on human wellbeing across a range of indicators including economic growth, health, and education. It gives a more holistic accounting of progress toward alleviating abject poverty in the world than just counting GDP. This year’s report focused on sustainability and equity, spurred on by the recent increases in global commodity prices and the impact those are having on food security in particular and global poverty levels generally.

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.

Despite a gloomy start, some Nature Conservancy veteran policy experts note that it is early in the conference, and there is still time for progress. These multi-year-long climate talks are a marathon, not a sprint.

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.