Publication

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 industrialized 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.