Back-room negotiations begin at Durban climate conference

Creative Commons: Oxfam International, 2011

Back-room negotiations began in earnest Monday on a deal to rescue the only treaty governing greenhouse gas reductions and to launch talks on a broader agreement to include the world’s largest polluters: China and other emerging economies, the United States and Europe.

Key players laid out their opening positions in public at U.N. climate talks in South Africa, and were beginning a round of private meetings to probe each other’s meanings and intentions – which remained murky.

South African authorities said they were deporting three activists from the Greenpeace environmental group after they were arrested trying to drape a protest banner from the rooftop of a beachfront hotel. The activists from Germany, Denmark and Australia pleaded guilty to trespassing in a court hearing, the Home Affairs Department said.

As the 194-nation conference moved into its decisive week, negotiators were feeling the pressure of a looming deadline: the expiry in 12 months of commitments by industrial countries to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions.

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