For the second consecutive day on Thursday, small island nations occupied centrestage at the climate negotiations pressing ahead with their demand for more ambitious emission cuts, even though their formal grouping

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, 2009 received a shot in the arm on its opening morning as an authoritative analysis showed that if countries deliver on their present commitments for the year 2020, they could almost keep the global rise in temperatures to within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, a goal that is now considered a necessity.

Encouraging signals in the last few days notwithstanding, the opening day of the climate change conference saw a tempering down of expectations. A new suggestion of a three-layered outcome emerged

Though the actions being committed by the developed countries on climate change have fallen way short of expectations, the developing countries have come up with some ambitious targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions notwithstanding the fact that there was little hope of any comprehensive treaty emerging from the Copenhagen summit.