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Items tagged 'COP17'

After Durban: Not phasing out HFCs ‘indefensible’

EIA Global Environment Campaigner Natasha Hurley was in Durban last week for COP17, the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2011; here she considers the event and what needs to happen next. The outcome of this year’s United Nations Climate Conference, which drew to a close in Durban at the weekend, is an important step forward [...]

Durban blog: Hope, alarm and the value of sandbags

As I write this, COP17, the international climate conference which began two weeks ago under a big storm cloud and torrential flooding, is about to enter the home stretch. The sense of surrealism I mentioned in an earlier post reached its apex today. Just to the right of the bench I’m on, an amateur pianist [...]

Durban blog: Air-con helps focus on issue of F-gases

Durban was hot and steamy yesterday – it’s getting on for high summer in the Southern Hemisphere – and I spent the best part of the afternoon in a glorified prefab (aka the “EU Pavilion”). COP17 has been mercifully light on air conditioning, a huge relief after the two weeks spent shivering in Cancún last [...]

Durban blog: Higher stakes in play at climate conference

Last Sunday night, flash floods killed eight people in and around the city of Durban and left thousands homeless. Just one in a series of recent extreme weather events here in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province, it probably wouldn’t have crossed most people’s radar screen were it not for the fact that thousands of foreign delegates [...]