When the dust settles after the Cancun climate change conference of the United Nations, a careful analysis will find that the adoption of the “Cancun Agreements” may have given the multilateral climate system a shot in the arm, but that the meeting also failed to save the planet from climate change and helped pass the burden of climate mitigation onto developing countries.

The global powers that be fiddle even as Cancun takes the mitigation of climate change backwards. (Editorial)

Negotiators beat low expectations in Cancun by forging agreement on several steps that will advance international co-operation on climate change.

It was inevitable that the commercial model of microfinance in India, with its minimalist and standardised model of lending, would grow into a bubble and run into trouble. Many microfinance commercial organisations have entered the market in search of profits and are competing to lend to the poor.

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But the unusually low winter temperatures experienced by the country's tropical region in July and August hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

Two payment for environmental services programs in the Amazon, namely, Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project in Bolivia and Bolsa Floresta Program in Brazil, have been pioneering initiatives to demonstrate the ability to encourage forest conservation through market mechanisms involving direct payments for avoiding deforestation.