The United Nations Climate Change Conference - Poznań, Poland kicked off on Monday, 1 December. The two-week meeting, the fourteenth Conference of the 192 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fourth meeting of the 183 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is the halfway mark in the negotiations on an ambitious and effective international response to climate change. The deal is to be clinched in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and will take effect in 2013, the year after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

COMIFAC member states are currently putting an enormous effort to identifying national and regional positions and to working out negotiation strategies.

For those who wishto be quickly briefed on the status of current climate negotiations and the complexities of the climate policy negotiation game, Wytze van der Gaast (JI Network, Netherlands) has published a paper on "The Challenging Task of Negotiating a Climate Protocol"(http://www.jiqweb.org/climate-coalition-building.pdf). Having served as a background paper for a presentation delivered at the recent Energy Delta Convention 2008, the paper provides an overview on current climate policy negotiations' complex game structure and offers solutions for future coalition building.

Climate Strategies will present its new report on “International support for Domestic Climate Policies” during the COP in Poznan on the 5th of December at 5pm in Pavillon 5, Poznan.. Six case studies are used to explore the domestic drivers and barriers for policies with climate benefits for developing countries. Additional papers review the role of policy indicators, policy targets and incentive schemes for successful policy implementation. This leads to a discussion of the mechanisms and institutional settings available to provide international support to increase scale, scope, and speed of implementation of domestic policies with climate benefits.

The report as well as other research documents can be downloarded on Climate Strategies' website (http://www.climatestrategies.org/our-research/category/40.html)