Fight over finance: where's the money, ask developing countries

Climate finance will be on the top of the minds of negotiators as the UN conference on climate change at Doha enters the second week on December 3. In the first seven days of the conference, the developed countries shied away from promising more money from next year until 2020 to developing countries to undertake mitigation and adaptation measures. The US $30 billion fast-start funding which started in 2010 ends this year and the next batch of funding, which is still under deliberation, begins only in 2020.

Agenda for Doha

The last conference of the Parties that took place in Durban in 2011 has put climate negotiations at the crossroads again. The decisions taken at Cancun in 2010 supported a bottom-up approach wherein countries agreed to take on voluntary emissions reduction commitments that were not legally binding. This, along with low expectations for the survival of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) post-2012 cast serious doubts on the continued role of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the future of a top-down, multilateral approach in climate negotiations

Doubts persist over Green Climate Fund taking off at Doha

With only four-and-half months to go for the climate summit at Doha, a recent UN workshop on climate finance gave negotiators a glimpse of what to expect during the deliberations on this topic at the next Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The workshop, held at Bonn in Germany from July 9 to 11, was the first of the two that the UNFCCC plans to hold this year on climate finance, prior to the Doha meet.

Seven point agenda for Rio meet on sustainable development

The two-day Delhi Ministerial Dialogue on the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil's capital Rio De Janeiro—also known as Rio+20—ended on October 4, with parties converging on a seven broad points. Sha Zukang, secretary general to Rio+20 and under-secretary general for economic and social,  affairs at the UN, along with India’s minister of state for environment and forest Jayanti Natarajan termed the dialogue a success at a joint press meet.

Countries haven’t done enough to combat climate change: Figueres

Governments recognise that current levels of efforts to combat climate change are not enough, said the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christina Figueres, at the end of the second day of the Panama climate meet, which ends on October 7.