Durban hosted United Nations Climate Change Conference 2011

The 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in the South African city Durban, from 28 November to 11 December 2011.

The conference which was officially referred to as the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties (CMP 7) to the Kyoto Protocol was aimed at reaching a new agreement to check the growing carbon emission worldover.

South African politician Maite Emily Nkoana-Mashabane presided over the conference which made a considerable progress in the direction of creating a Green Climate Fund (GCF) for which a management framework was adopted. The Green Climate Fund would allocate 100 billion dollar among the poor countries every year to adapt to climate impacts.

An agreement to limit the growing carbon emission was also reached by the negotiators.

Durban Platform

After a consistent negotiation for two weeks, negotiators present in the conference ultimately reached to an agreement on 11 December 2011. The agreement was named Durban Platform. Under the agreement negotiators agreed to be part of a legally binding treaty to check carbon emission. The treaty whose terms are yet to be defined, would be concretized by 2015 and come into effect in 2020.

Durban platform could be called a significant development in the direction of climate conservation as it is for the first time that developing countries like China and India and economic superpower like US are part of any such treaty. Earlier all three countries had refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.