Climate talks in Durban: Successful diplomacy but no progress on climate protection

The seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed in December 2011 that a new comprehensive climate agreement should be negotiated by 2015. Moreover, in Durban, South Africa, the international community also decided that a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol would begin in 2013. But given the low level of engagement by other industrialised countries under this agreement, the EU is committing itself more or less alone. Durban was successful diplomatically because it put an end, for the moment, to the wrangling over the Kyoto Protocol and a new treaty. A glance at the agreed timetable for negotiations, however, reveals that the United Nations have failed to introduce any effective short-term measures to counteract the accelerating pace of global warming. This would require an assertive policy seeking both unilateral and bilateral progress. Consequently Germany and the EU must increase their climate protection efforts and will need, in their foreign, development and economic policy, to pay greater attention to the impacts of climate change