They make no promise on extending financial and technology support to developing countries. With just a day left for the informal negotiating session on climate change in Bangkok to conclude, the chair of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), Aysar Tayeb of Saudi Arabia, expressed dismay at the progress made so far. AWG-LCA, which was mandated to cease functioning by the end of the year at Doha, is one of the three tracks under which negotiations are on and has a slew of elements under it.

Will negotiating parties be able to sort out their differences at Doha?
At the most recent UN meeting on climate change at Bonn, deep divisions that have existed between countries came to the fore, obscuring progress on the “delicately balanced” political deal that was agreed to just five months ago in December at Durban. As 195 countries gathered for the first time after the very important turnaround in Durban to negotiate a new deal for 2020, questions of how the burden of containing climate change will be shared resurfaced.

But a workshop on equity at the climate inter-sessional refused to move beyond well-embedded party demarcations. It was India, which at last year’s climate negotiations at Durban had insisted on bringing the principle of equity back into the agenda for tackling climate change. The concept, which not so long ago had almost fallen off the climate agenda now features in almost everyone’s negotiation agenda at the mid-year climate change meeting at Bonn.

EU Aviation Directive will be binding; airlines' operations cost to increase. Starting January 1 in the new year, all flights operating in the European Union will be subjected to carbon emission limits. The regulations will also apply to aircraft flying in and out of the 27-nation bloc. This follows the European Court of Justice, the highest court of the European Union, ruling in the affirmative that the aviation industry shall be subjected to a cap on its carbon emissions.

The 17th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Durban in December 2011. Negotiations were heated and acrimonious, as the world desperately searched for new ways to avoid the toughest of questions—how to drastically reduce emissions to keep the world somewhat within safe levels and how to do this while ensuring equity. With uneasy answers, the easy solution was to push the world to another round of messy negotiations for a new treaty, protocol or legal instrument or something like that.

Forest conservation effort in Meghalaya can claim carbon benefits. India’s first pilot project to be recognized under the UN’s mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) could be in the East Khasi Hills in Meghalaya.