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Climate and Development Lab

“Informing a more just and effective global climate change policy”

Category Archives: Regions

April 18, 2012 Shaping the Durban Platform: Latin America and the Caribbean in a future High Ambition Deal

By José Alberto Garibaldi, Monica Araya, and Guy Edwards After the longest session on record, governments at the COP17 in Durban in December 2011 agreed to negotiate by 2015 a climate deal to enter into force in 2020. The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action defied predictions that the meeting in South Africa would lead to [...]

January 24, 2012 Latin American governments and civil society combine forces at COP17

By Guy Edwards The COP17 was a watershed moment for Latin American civil society participation in the UNFCCC negotiations. Civil society organizations (CSOs) actively engaged with governments at the talks and, in turn, governments made efforts to reach out to civil society. This increased level of exchange can be observed on two levels.

January 24, 2012 Why the UNFCCC needs more countries like Mexico

By Guy Edwards During the COP17 I caught up with Dr. Fernando Tudela Abad, one of Mexico’s foremost climate change experts and a high ranking official of the Mexican delegation. Dr. Tudela is Under Secretary of Environmental Policy and Planning at the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resource and also chairs the expert group [...]

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December 22, 2011 Running from Climate Change: The Obama Administration’s Changing Rhetoric

  By Graciela Kincaid At both President Obama’s “job speech” to the Joint Session of Congress and his speech at the Clinton Global Initiative last September, one issue was shockingly absent from the agenda: climate change. The term was scarcely mentioned in either speech, and more surprisingly, the administration also failed to deliver on the [...]

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December 8, 2011 It Takes Two Hands to Clap

By Linlang He Will China break the impasse in the negotiations? Yesterday morning’s High-Level Forum on Climate Change at China Pavilion clearly lifted the spirits of its participants. Head Delegate of the China Delegation Mr. Xie Zhenhua, together with leaders from the World Bank, the UK and the EU, summarized China’s current achievements in energy efficiency [...]

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December 3, 2011 Latin American civil society builds bridges at the COP17 in Durban

By Guy Edwards and Mónica López-Baltodano* Today, at the COP17, a group of Latin American platforms, networks and fora organized by the Building Bridges initiative met with delegations from Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama to discuss the primary issues under negotiation including the longevity of the Kyoto Protocol, designing the Green Climate Fund and adaptation. The Ecuadorian [...]

November 30, 2011 Jonathan Pershing Frames the US Stance in Durban

By Graciela Kincaid On November 29th, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing swept into the US Delegation Offices and jumped into a 45-minute session regarding the US position at the negotiations. He held the invited American students enraptured, deftly framing the key issues for the American delegation and responding to questions. He provided [...]

November 27, 2011 US Players: Days Before Durban

By Kelly Rogers On Monday, delegates from around the world will convene in Durban, South Africa for a two-week Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Delegates will pick up where last year’s Cancun negotiations left off, particularly concerning the contentious Green Climate Fund. At home in the US, [...]

November 23, 2011 Youth Activism: Hope of a Better Climate?

By Linlang He “This world demands the qualities of youth- not a time of life but a state of mind: a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease” – Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation” Cape Town, South [...]

November 22, 2011 Caribbean Paves the Way for Insurance-Based Climate Adaptation

By Adam Kotin In its influential Third Assessment Report (2001), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) jumpstarted action on climate change adaptation by stating that a certain level of climate change was inevitable, and that the world should get to work preparing for it. Last year in Cancun, the United Nations Framework Convention on [...]

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