COP17 Durban Climate Conference December 6

11:44am GMT, 6 Dec update from Adam Groves

We're rapidly approaching the business-end of these talks. Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, gives us the low-down on some of the key players' positions, including a neat summary of the 'five conditions' that China wants met before it's willing to begin work towards joining a legally binding agreement.

12:12pm GMT, 6 Dec update from Bill Gunyon

The most powerful statement in this morning's briefing from the Climate Action Network (the NGO umbrella organization) emerged through the unlikely combination of a South African Bishop questioned by a journalist from Turkey.

The US is a nation of great faith, of Christian commitment. We find it extraordinary that they are behaving like this. We find it immoral. Environmental destruction is a sin against God. We say to faith groups in the US - you've got to recognise your responsibilities to combat climate change.

These were the words of Bishop Geoff Davies, Executive Director of the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute. His presentation earlier in the briefing was effectively a powerful restatement of the enlightened vision of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change which this Conference of Parties is supposed to be observing. He said:

I call on political leaders to put moral principles before economics. The well-being of planet and people comes before financial considerations. I can only say that is it immoral of nations to say they are going to continue emitting carbon until temperature rises beyond the limits.

You can see a separate OneClimate interview with Bishop Davies here.

5:37pm GMT, 6 Dec update from Bill Gunyon

Today's high level segment of the Durban climate talks was outflanked in significance by a press briefing that took place immediately before the formal opening session in the presence of the UN Secretary-General.

I'm pretty confident that this was the first time that ministers from the BASIC countries (China, India, Brazil, South Africa) have spoken to the media at a UN climate conference.

The fact that the briefing replaced one scheduled by the United States may have accounted for the uncharacteristically jaunty mood of Xie Zhenhua. At one point, I felt sure he was going to tell a joke.

Such weighty symbolism left the content struggling to keep up. The BASIC group is not a negotiating party here - they are the increasingly uneasy bedfellows of a sprawling collection of developing countries known as G77+China. Words were carefully chosen, to put it mildly (I'll do a separate post about the Indian minister who did not follow this decorum).

Will the pressures of the Durban conference push this elite group into disagreement with each other? or with their wider partners? This was the thrust of the journalists but the South African chair allowed six questions to be asked in sequence. This ensured that most of them were forgotten by the time the ministers gave their answers.

I'm sure there is solidarity with the poorest countries on the imperative of a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol. But will the likes of Bangladesh and Kenya be content to experience the ravages of climate change for another decade while these big emitters (for that is what they are) duck out of any binding commitments or higher ambition for emissions reductions?

6:19pm GMT, 6 Dec update from Bill Gunyon

Jayanthi Natarajan, Indian Minister for Environment and Forests, has been previewed as the bad cop amongst the leading protagonists of the Durban climate talks. (I mean as in "good cop, bad cop" - not a bad Conference of Parties!).

The minister has wasted no time in living up to the billing. Her tough words at today's briefing by BASIC countries will send a shudder through the well-oiled machinery of compromise that powers these UN events.

What the European Union wants to hear is words of comfort that one day very soon India will sign up to its idea of a roadmap for a legally binding agreement on emissions reductions. Ms Natarajan is not in the mood:

some countries have projected the question of a legally binding agreement in future as a panacea for climate change. This question confuses implementation with ambition and is therefore not quite correct....for a very large number of poor in the developing world, the world has not changed at all.... (they) cannot be expected to be legally bound to reduce emissions when they make no emissions at all.

No mention that Indian companies own Jaguar and much of the UK's capacity for steel production. In essence, India does not want to talk about a long term agreement until after 2015, placing it closest to the US position.

Not that Ms Natarajan is suggesting neglect of low carbon development on India's part:

Developing countries should not be asked to make a payment every time an existing obligation becomes due on the part of developed countries. We have already walked the extra mile and in fact are doing far more than what many of our partners in developed world are doing.

Over to you Connie.

7:27pm GMT, 6 Dec update from Bill Gunyon

I seem doomed in my efforts to get a strong handle on what's happening in negotiations on the financing of REDD+ (the proposed approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). Durban is heaving with forest experts but those involved inside the talks are having a bad-blog day or three.

Last night's press briefing by indigenous groups doesn't appear to have happened. Having missed this afternoon's Global Witness briefing which had promised what I wanted, I turned to the UN's recording only to find that the sound system failed for much of the session.

It's important because deforestation causes over 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions. And also because some estimates of the cost of REDD+ (which will compensate developing countries for not cutting down their forests) suggest that the Green Climate Fund needs to get off to a flying start to satisfy this sector alone.

Within the dodgy soundtrack, I detected the following from Nils Hermann Ranum of Rainforest Foundation Norway.

First, that we should expect some agreement on REDD finance, perhaps proposing a mixture of public and private sources.

And second, that there may or may not be a reference to market-based carbon trading mechanisms. Apparently Brazil is opposed to this, aligning itself somewhat unusually with Bolivia.

It's still too vague, perhaps for good reason. I'm dropping hints here to my colleagues to try to get their hands on a forests insider for interview.

9:36pm GMT, 6 Dec update from Bill Gunyon

The heads of the US and China delegations met for a one-on-one earlier today. This is the Guardian Environment Correspondent's impression of the US impression of the translation of what Xie Zhenhua said.

fionaharvey: Todd Stern says China's position unchanged: "Not my impression there has been a change at all in respect to a legally binding [deal] #COP17

1:38am GMT update from Bill Gunyon

On Monday the international NGOs turned the ignition on a more hostile attitude towards the US, castigating the delegation for its negative tactics on every comma of the negotiating text.

With one or two exceptions, the media hasn't been fired up by the prospect of NGOs demanding that the US should "stand aside" if it can't be more constructive. Todd Stern has now pat-balled his way through two press conferences, not once being challenged on the alleged blocking behaviour.

I've always felt that the soft underbelly of US intransigence is the threat of legal reparations for its wilful neglect of the damage caused by global warming. Geoff Lye, Executive Chair of the UK think-tank SustainAbility, puts it perfectly in his blog yesterday (skip to last para):

I have repeatedly observed how it is only a matter of time before carbon intensive companies will follow asbestos and tobacco companies into court. Early legal actions have had limited success, but directors of companies that have chosen not to take responsible climate actions since the scientific evidence became irrefutable in the mid-90s are increasingly exposed to liability claims as damaging weather events and patterns become more frequent

This is the sort of language that the US delegation understands.

2:02am GMT update from Bill Gunyon

I really don't know how to respond to the speech by the UN Secretary-General at the opening of the High-Level Segment of the Durban climate talks yesterday.

Should we admire Ban Ki-moon for his ability to grasp the complex dynamics of the negotiations and gently admonish those who seek to close doors on the good name of the multilateral process?

Or should we feel maddened that he misses the opportunity, and indeed responsibility of his office, to lash out at the collective loss of political courage that the world demands? Did he not reflect on how history will judge his spineless concession:

the ultimate goal of a comprehensive and binding climate change agreement may be beyond our reach - for now

When in doubt I resort to flippant observation of language. Ban has mastered the use of one-liners, small but perfectly formed injunctions. On paper, they resemble verses from the psalms:

That is the challenge before us today. That is the imperative

Without exaggeration, we can say: the future of our planet is at stake.

Or perhaps better still, the speech could be rewritten as a sort of South Korean form of the haiku:

We must be realistic

About expectations of a breakthrough

in Durban

At both of Earth's poles

I have seen ice which once dominated

The horizon

2:38am GMT update from Bill Gunyon

It could be an inevitable reaction to long days of intensive absorption in the minutiae of these complex negotiations.

Or it could just be irritation at the viral attack that I suffered yesterday (the digital sort) which put me out of action for several hours.

But I will enter Day 8 of the Durban climate talks in a mood of anarchic rebellion at their failure or, more accurately, their serial failure of recent years. I'll get over it, but for now I'm going to applaud those who speak what others feel but dare not say.

Who is this guy Patrick Bond? He's had a good conference, accommodating activists on his university premises in Durban and popping up for rabble-rousing interviews in the local media.

Now he's written a splendid article which talks of a 4-degree temperature rise, 150 million deaths in Africa and alleges that:

Pretoria’s team and the biased pro-Northern chair, SA foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, appear ready to sell out the African continent...an international climate court should be established, and preparations made for comprehensive sanctions against US goods and services.

There's much more similar invective to enjoy. Bond even has a crack at the Climate Action Network (CAN) as "representing big international NGOs mostly without any commitment to climate justice."

All the more strange that my second example of a healthy dose of discontent is published in the blog section the CAN site. Written by an unnamed African NGO, it uses far more sober language than Patrick Bond but to no less effect:

Could the outcome end up so poor, so far from the principles and objectives of the Convention, that South Africa would prefer to denounce rather than defend the process?

I'm leaning towards the view that Africa should indeed dump the deal that's emerging - but then tomorrow is another day.

3:00am GMT update from Bill Gunyon

Was there any material shift in the tectonics of the Durban climate talks yesterday? If there was, I suspect it could only be detected by those at the heart of proceedings and then only in mood rather than content.

China's fan club has cooled off somewhat after the country's choice of one of the less positive options offered in the draft text's approach to a legally binding agreement. This puts it on a par with India whose language yesterday was uncompromising.

Later today we face the prospect of Brazil entering the sin bin if its parliament votes the wrong way on the new Forest Code.

If you try very very hard, you can derive something positive from Todd Stern's press briefing for the US delegation. In the context of the European roadmap to a legally binding agreement, he was asked:

Are you saying that you're not going to be part of those negotiations between now and 2015 or in the short term?

And in Stern's convoluted but just about logical way, he said - no, we're willing to start talking about a process now. Unlike the tough lady from India.

These forensics also uncover something which sounds positive on the Green Climate Fund. You'll recall our fears that US objections to the pre-conference draft instrument for the fund would force it to be renegotiated. But he said:

here's an instrument, a document that was negotiated that is, I don't know, 15 or so pages long. And that's not going to get reopened. I mean, it's quite clear at this point that that's not going to get reopened.

Todd Stern said that the areas for discussion would be addressed in a "covered decision". That sounds like a preamble. Anyway, the mood on the Green Climate Fund remains cordial.

3:08am GMT update from Bill Gunyon

if you have any comments, please write to me at guides@oneworld.net

COP17 Durban Climate Conference December 6

Alden Meyer - COP17