Climate-Stupid Agriculture @ the UNFCCC

by Trudi Zundel With food security threatened throughout the developing world, the global community has been paying a lot more attention to the effect of climate change on agriculture. More volatile weather patterns makes planning crop rotations difficult; higher concentration of rain patterns, whether dry or wet spells, means that fields either dry out or wash away--and farmers have little...

Post-2012 Climate Regime: How Much Worse Can it Get?

by Trudi Zundel The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol will end in 2012. In anticipation of that ending, Parties have been discussing what form the new UNFCCC commitments will take. The first item on the table: will there be a second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol? Developed and developing countries have fundamentally different hopes for a Durban outcome. Developed countries are...

(The Lack of) High Hopes for Durban

by Samuli Sinisalo On Monday the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes for two weeks in Durban, South Africa. This is the 17th annual Conference of Parties, where parties come together to fulfill the framework convention. As the negotiations grow ever more technical and complex, it is good to keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the convetion is to stabilize the green...