Global Issues: Environment- Down and Out in Durban: End of the Line for Kyoto?

Durban, the city where the fun never sets, is about to host the lastest round on international climate change negotiations. CFR has a useful article on its propects - click here!

As delegates from nearly 200 countries prepare to descend on Durban, South Africa next week for the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), pessimism runs high. Privately, the leaders of major established and emerging economies concede that no new climate treaty containing binding emissions reductions will be negotiated before 2016. And even if an agreement were reached, it would not come into force until 2020—eight years from now. This bleak outlook comes despite warnings from scientists and economists about the dangers of delaying dramatic action to mitigate the planet’s warming.