´óÏó´«Ã½

It's the time of year when this middle-aged man's thoughts, at least, turn to dark puddings and the laughter of children.

But the end of the year is also a time for tidying up loose ends. And before I put the laptop down, give the mouse a few days off the lead and recharge all the batteries that need it, there are a few things I wanted to set down here.

First, a big thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read and post comments on this blog. It's a new venture for me, but one thing I'm already am sure of - the more discussion we can have, the better the reading will be.

Secondly, an apology to everyone whose e-mails I've failed to reply to over the year. On an average day I receive 150-odd, and unfortunately there are days and weeks when I just don't have time to reply - which is especially galling when they are as nice as they were in response to .

From my perspective, 2008 has provided something of a breathing space in a calendar that is becoming more and more dominated by climate change.

2007 saw the chain of and the key ; and 2009 should see the crafting of a new global climate pact that in its complexity and breadth will make the Kyoto Protocol look like an infant's plaything.

A journalist has to follow the big political and social stories and big set-piece events, and that can leave precious little time for anything else.

The last year has been slightly quieter on the climate front, which has meant a little more time for covering the other environmental issues that don't so often make headlines.

The is one; another is the - and therefore consumption - that could undermine progress in other areas.

Deforestation remains a cross-cutting issue, impinging on biodiversity, water resources, climate change, and the livelihoods of people who depend directly on the forest.

These are all issues we have tried to highlight over the year, although I fear climate change has still probably emerged as the issue covered most often.

One aspect of climate politics that has largely escaped comment over the year is that 2008 marks the beginning of the 's first "commitment period" - the time by which the reductions are supposed to be made.

The protocol prescribed cuts by the period 2008-12; no longer is it a future target. It is a sobering thought.

Climate change has real political momentum now, and is showing signs of dragging deforestation along with it, albeit in a way that presents some social and ecological difficulties.

But on other issues such as biodiversity loss and the over-exploitation of fisheries there is still far less little discernible political movement at the global level.

In terms of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s coverage of the environment, 2008 saw the initiation of this blog and also the introduction of video to the website on a much more structured basis, which I hope enhances our reporting of the nature end of the issue, such as my colleague .

Despite these changes, there is still far more information coming in than we manage to translate into news stories, and if we've missed issues and events during the year that you felt important, apologies.

So, my best wishes to you over the Christmas period. May it be white if you want it white, green if you want it green, and a hazy blur if that's what you prefer.

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Barack Obama's choice of words as he announced at the weekend could hardly have been more pointed.

Success isn't just down to "ensuring the facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology," he said; "it's about listening to what our scientists have to say even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient".

In other words; in contrast to my predecessor, I'll listen to the same scientists that Al Gore listens to, and I'll act on what they say.

In fact, by appointing scientists such as to his inner circle - "one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change" - the president-elect has ensured that some of those voices will be in his ear all the time.

Whatever your views on climate change, there's no doubt that the switch from the Bush to Obama administrations promises a massive seachange in environmental politics.

It could bring changes in all sorts of issues, including management of the oceans, a particular interest of who comes in as head of the . Some US fisheries are among the best managed in the world and spreading that sort of knowledge could restrain the free-for-all that still pertains in many of the world's fishing grounds.

But there's little doubt that the first significant action will occur in the arena of climate change.

Mr Bush is often referred to as a president who didn't accept that humans were changing the climate; but at least in public, he did, . His administration also endorsed two major reports from the in 2001 and 2007 - the latter concluding it was "very likely" that human activities were changing the climate.

But he stopped short of endorsing strong domestic or international action to cut emissions. His administration pursued agreements through bodies such as the and the forum (Apec) that .

At the Asia-Pacific Partnership's , Mr Bush's energy secretary Samuel Bodman said the private sector would solve the climate problem because industry heads cared about the future.

From 20 January, the approach will be radically different.

The domestic long-term climate goal of reducing emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050 is ambitious and in line with IPCC science. But by 2050, Mr Obama will be long gone from office, and so what he manages to implement during the only four years he is assured of having in office is, perhaps, more pertinent.

If he follows through on the , the domestic measures we can expect to see over the next couple of years include:

• establishment of a nationwide carbon market which will join up with other systems such as Europe's Emissions Trading System


• mandated improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency (perhaps tied to a rescue package for the ailing US car industry)


• "weatherization" of one million homes each year to save energy


• an expansion in the use of renewable technologies and - perhaps - nuclear

Pledging is, of course, much easier than acting. Over the last month we have seen European leaders watering down their much-vaunted climate and energy package, and Australia (where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has changed climate policy just as Mr Obama intends to) well below the 25-40% range that the IPCC recommends - both in response to business pressures.

Mr Obama will not be immune from similar pressures. The two key advantages he holds, I would suggest, are the traditional honeymoon that most change-espousing leaders enjoy when they enter office, and the fact that US energy efficiency is so poor that it should be possible to make some major fuel-saving improvements at minimal cost.

On the international scene, he has pledged to "re-engage" with the UN process, and that has been warmly welcomed in a number of capitals.

So far, all has been sweetness. But that is not guaranteed to continue.

Developing countries might say - indeed, did say at the - that they have been looking for US leadership on the issue.

But that doesn't necessarily mean they will be happy to follow where Mr Obama wants to lead them. At a news conference during the UN talks, John Kerry - a key ally - if major developing countries accept some form of restrictions on their own emissions.

Mr Kerry's words were generally written up in positive terms by the media. But putting on a more sceptical hat, there were hints of an uncompromising US that would, as it does on so many other issues, be attempting to set an agenda that the rest of the world should follow.

And this, I think, is the problem that may lie ahead for Mr Obama. Applauding his intention to lead is one thing; but it's entirely possible that the tight timescale of the UN climate process will quickly lead to a situation where the US is demanding - or being seen to demand - that developing countries must sign up to this or that, or there won't be a deal.

That's particularly true in the light of showing that carbon cuts in developed countries alone cannot lead to the kind of global reductions that the IPCC believes are necessary to avoid "dangerous" climate change.

However fresh and fragrant Mr Obama wants to appear, the US is still the US, with an image formed over a much longer timespan than a single presidency.

In some capitals, it is still seen as the country that more than any other has developed economically on the back of carbon emissions that now threaten to wreak climatic carnage on the poor, and thus has no right to tell anyone else to do until it pays some penance for its history.

If governments are to agree a new global deal on climate change by the end of next year, the US is going to have to listen as well as to lead; and that, perhaps, ought to be the first piece of advice that Dr Holdren gives his new president.

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Probably the least surprising environmental news of the week was that .

Unsurprising, because .

But worth noting, I would suggest, because of all the regions, Europe, with its stable population, relatively slow economic growth, increasing forest cover and raft of environmental policies is in the best shape to tackle biodiversity loss.

If it can't be stemmed here, what hope for the rest?

Combined with the distinct feeling around the last week that governments are more interested in avoiding damage to their competitiveness than in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it got me wondering whether setting targets is really the best way to make progress on these issues.

The biodiversity target was agreed at the UN conference that came 10 years after the Rio Earth Summit - the , held in Johannesburg in 2002.

The gives this rationale:

Clear, long-term outcome-oriented targets that are adopted by the international community can help shape expectations and create the conditions in which all actors, whether governments, the private sector, or civil society, have the confidence to develop solutions to common problems.
By establishing targets and indicators, progress can be assessed and appropriate actions taken.

All true enough. But there has to be political will to achieve the targets.

Take the . Its greenhouse gas targets were not especially onerous. A modern developed nation could easily make the small cuts mandated within a decade and a half - at a cost, of course, but they knew that when they signed up.

Some have done so; but not all. shows that as of two years ago, Spain's emissions were about 40% above its Kyoto target. Austria's were 25% above, while Japan and Ireland were about 12% off course; there are others.

So clearly the mere setting of a relatively easy target does not mean that it will be met.

As economist , governments have a habit of promising more than they can, or intend to, deliver. When the target date is further away than the next election, it's not a bad electoral strategy, but there is surely a tendency for the public to assume that if a stringent target has been set, the problem is on the way to being solved.

So are targets worthwhile? Would all the time and energy not be better spent simply developing and implementing policies that deliver firm benefits?

Europe is failing to curb biodiversity loss, not because of anything to do with the target, but because it doesn't yet have the right policies in place to stem all the things that drive biodiversity loss. It's even .

Over the next year, governments will wrangle long into many nights about another set of targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This time around, it will be even more complex, given that curbs for developing countries are also on the horizon.

Then in 2010, they'll meet to discuss why they have collectively failed to meet the 2010 biodiversity target.

Concerned observers will look, shake heads, lament the failure and demand a tougher target next time.

What is right? I don't know. But I think it's worth asking whether the whole notion of target-based environmental treaties is wide of the mark, and whether governments would be better off just taking measures that they know will work.

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Two kinds of announcement from conservation groups habitually garner a prominent spot in the news agenda; either species are in peril, or species have been discovered alive and well.

On the face of it, WWF's highlighting this week of the over the last decade falls into the second category.

I don't know about you, but the prospect of a huntsman spider the size of a dinner plate is going to get my attention.

The spectacular green snake Trimeresurus gumprechti that WWF uses as the frontispiece for its report is also a visual wonder, as is the whole notion of the frog Chiromantis samkosensis with its green blood and turquoise bones.

Let's be honest; this is sexy, feel-good, wow-factor biodiversity news.

But when you look to the next decade rather than the last, the most important species in the whole report is undoubtedly the most familiar of all; Homo sapiens.

The Mekong's biodiversity has been preserved largely because a number of factors have kept human development at bay.

Parts of the region consist of wild mountain ranges which, if peopled at all, are home to ethnic groups who still have to live with nature as an equal partner rather than completely taming it. The Delta is criss-crossed with channels, making road-building difficult; people I know who have worked there talk about the local mosquitoes in phrases that conjure up images of flying piranhas.

Conflicts in and between Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China have curbed the pace of development, as have regimes that restricted entrepreneurship.

The Sun shines and the rains fall. Nature is productive, and the human load has not been big enough to subsume most of that productivity for itself; which is why nature has stayed so rich, and so hidden.

But as WWF points out, the balance of power between man and nature is changing fast.

Vietnam's population is rising at about 1% per year, that of Laos more than twice as quickly. Thailand's economy grew by just under 10% per year for a decade, until the Asian economic woes of the late 90s intervened.

Political systems have been liberalised, major conflicts are consigned to memory. So the human demand for land, water, timber, minerals and fuel rises.

According to , Cambodian fishermen - I guess that's still the word - pull an astounding seven million watersnakes from Tonle Sap lake every year, for food and for crocodile farms.

Laos is planning to turn a pretty coin from , becoming the "battery of southeast Asia". The giant dam, built with European investment, opens next year; there will be many more.

On the plains, cities expand, roads radiate outwards, farming becomes at once more extensive and more intensive, forests fall.

As WWF notes, 70% of the endemic mammals in the region are on the international - among them five primates, the tiger and the Asian elephant.

The Red List throws up the same diagnosis on page after page; habitat loss and hunting, habitat loss and hunting.

That the region should develop swiftly is no surprise. But it does mean, as WWF points out, that the development is going to have to become sustainable pretty quickly if the region's amazing creatures are to survive beyond much beyond the time of their discovery.

Can it? The portents are not good. As EU nations showed last week when attempting to finalise a package of measures to reduce carbon emissions, the attraction of business-as-usual remains powerful.

I have enjoyed that WWF has collated for its report this week, and thinking about the roles that the animals play in the region's complex ecosystems.

I love the gleam of the tiger's eyes, suddenly illuminated in the forest camera trap. I can almost hear the leaf rustle as the newly discovered Gekko scientiadventura scampers across it.

I'm going to relish the sexy feel-good end of the biodiversity news spectrum while I can.

Because I have a horrible feeling that within a couple of human generations, Homo sapiens will be exercising its untrammelled dominance over most of the Greater Mekong, just as it does now over the Danube, Ganges and Colorado.

The species peering into forest camera traps today will then be only glimpsed in the cages of zoos and the pages of natural history books, and journalists and conservation groups will be telling their even more familiar feel-bad tale of "species in peril".

I would love to be wrong. Are there any arguments that suggest I am?

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POZNAN, POLAND: So the numbers are still in the deal; and if the numbers are all, as the EU claims, then everything in the world's climate garden smells of roses.

Following what have apparently been strenuous talks, the 27 EU nations that have in Brussels are still intending to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called it "the most ambitious package anywhere in the world". The targets themselves aren't the world's most ambitious, but the bloc is the first to set out a detailed raft of mechanisms for making the cuts.

The EU decision has practical and symbolic significance - practical because of its impact on greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, and symbolic because the EU traditionally claims to be the world's leader on climate change, and so what it does affects what others are prepared to do.

So we find the Brussels decision reverberating around the halls here in Poznan, half a continent away, where 189 members of the have been haggling for two weeks over what might and what might not go into a new global pact which is supposed to be finalised in a year's time.

Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, suggested here that the numbers are indeed all, as did French ecology minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. Their line is that the rest of the world will look at the EU decision, see the 20% figure intact, and be satisfied that the bloc is making firm commitments to reduce emissions at a time of financial strife.

As Mr Barroso put it, in a play on Barack Obama's campaign mantra: "The EU's message to global partners is 'y‎es you can'."

But the small print of the agreement may tell a different story.

Let me bombard you with a few numbers. EU emissions are already about 9% below 1990 levels; so a further 11% is needed to reach the 2020 goal.

Countries will be allowed to purchase 3-4% of that by buying emission credits outside Europe - through, for example, building renewable energy facilities or paying to plant carbon-absorbing forests in developing countries.

So that leaves a target from now of 7-8%. But companies and countries can, if they want, buy extra credits on the open market until 2012 and bank them, effectively betting that the early investment will save them money in the long run.

Calculations by WWF suggest that could result in a further 3-4% being lopped off the target; so now the concrete pledge could amount to a 4% reduction over the next 12 years.

One more number crunch. The EU package envisages not a 20% but a 30% cut by 2020 if there is a global deal.

The , when presenting recommendations to the UK government at the beginning of the month, took a twin tack approach, effectively saying "you should do x if the EU target is 20% and you should do y if it ends up being 30%."

The European Council deliberations over the last two days have barely mentioned the 30% target, let alone plotted a path towards achieving it if it comes into play.

Mme Kosciusko-Morizet said a decision was taken to "prepare for 20%, and then set up a decision-making process that would enable us to adapt to the 30% figure".

Remembering that from today's levels of emissions, 20% and 30% really mean 11% and 21%, that means the EU may suddenly have to decide how to double the level of its existing commitment - and the option of buying carbon credits from abroad has already been heavily exercised.

Plus the concentration on 20% could send the message that the EU isn't expecting a global deal any time soon.

Phew. Sorry to burden you with so many numbers, but the phrase "the devil is in the detail" could have been coined for this issue - it's a perfect description, and one of the reasons why I have lost so much hair doing this job.

And I haven't even mentioned yet the other numbers that have some observers hopping mad - the derogations that will allow some sectors of industry to get their pollution permits for free rather than having to buy them.

Predictably, environmental groups have condemned the package.

Tomas Wyns from the called it "a very dark day for EU climate politics", for Stephan Singer of it was "an embarrassment".

's Elise Ford, concerned that the package will not now be raising funds earmarked for helping the poorest countries adapt to climate impacts, said that "millions of poor people have been left in danger because EU leaders bowed to business lobby pressure and faltered at an historic moment".

This isn't the final EU word on the matter. The European Parliament meets on Wednesday, and it could yet throw the package back to governments; certainly some MEPs are already talking of rejecting it as unacceptably weak.

If that happens, the game of ping-pong could go on for some time.

The impact on developing countries, without whose engagement there cannot be a global deal, will take some time to emerge; there is lots of small print to digest.

One African delegate I spoke to wasn't impressed by the level of ambition. "It's not enough," he said.

If that turns out to be a widely-held view, all bets on reaching that elusive Copenhagen deal would be off.

to the rafters as he, too, used the Obama line of "yes, we can".

While the large print of the EU package might give the same message, there's a chance that the small print will be heard as "no, we couldn't" - in which case, the response might be "well, we can't either".

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POZNAN, POLAND: In politics, as in many other walks of life, timing is everything.

Arguably, the here has come about two months too early; and instead of a conference of decisions, it is turning into one of "what ifs".

What if European Union countries don't finalise, or weaken, their during their meeting in Brussels, which runs simultaneously with the two days of ministerial-level discussions here?

What if the EU had been able to say at this meeting how it would fund developing countries wanting to switch to a "green economy", instead of pledging to roll its proposals out in January?

What if Barack Obama's incoming US administration supplied the US delegates here, rather than the outgoing George Bush administration?

The goal is to reach a new global accord on climate change by the end of next year, when Copenhagen plays host to the UN conference.

The Poznan meeting is supposed to mark the transition from a "year of ideas" to a "year of negotiation"; but how can people know what they're negotiating if all the ideas aren't in yet?

It's not often I bring out my laurels and burnish them; but I do remember predicting this timing problem two years ago, as I chatted with Phil Clapp of the , one of the most knowledgeable people on the politics of climate change I have ever met, under the awnings of the UN pavilion in Nairobi.

Phil's absence here - several months ago - leaves a big hole in the lives of journalists, activists and politicians who profited from his wisdom and enjoyed his company.

He's the kind of person the public hardly ever sees, but who helps those of us with less natural wisdom to make sense of it all - which in turn, I think, helps you by making our reporting more accurate and more insightful.

Listening to a succession of important delegates from presidents, prime ministers and UN dignitaries saying how much they were looking forward to working with Mr Obama's administration, I asked myself another "what if" question; what would Phil make of it all?

I think he would have pointed out the US realities; that even a president-elect who is pretty unequivocal about his aim of tackling climate change will have many other issues on his plate.

I think he would have emphasised that developing countries don't only want the US, the EU and the rest of the developed world to promise to cut their emissions; they want to know what money the West will put in, how that money will be raised and managed, what clean technologies will be transferred on what terms, how forests will be protected, and what restrictions they would be expected to place on their emissions; all this will need to be clear before they will sign any deal.

John Kerry, who is to chair the powerful , told reporters here that the timescale would not slip - that there must be a deal in Copenhagen.

It is ambitious, to say the least; and the Pew Group is among those cautioning that if a deal is done in a year's time, it may not include firm numerical targets for cutting emissions.

To understand the political realities of something like that - an agreement on cutting emissions without targets on how much - Phil is exactly the sort of person I would have needed to approach.

If the Obama administration is serious about making significant reductions in its own greenhouse gas emissions and in leading the rest of the world to a low-carbon future, one senses it is going to have to get those questions asked, and answered, very quickly.

The fact that it couldn't do so before this year's UN conference, though, may turn out to be a significant factor when the show rolls on to Copenhagen - as may the fact that the EU arrived here with one hand tied and the other behind its back.

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POZNAN, POLAND: You'll be pleased to hear - I hope - that not everybody at the here is busy just talking about what countries could or should be doing to reduce carbon emissions, decrease energy use or whatever else it might be.

Some have come with inventions that might actually help do the job of reducing emissions, decreasing energy use and so on.

As a relief from the talk, I took a walk around the energy technology exhibition in the hope of finding some ideas that were new to me, if not entirely new to science.

For the most part, it was business as usual - low-energy lightbulbs, heat pumps, gadgets to control energy use in the home, more efficient solar cells - all of value, but nothing that wasn't a natural iteration of concepts you could have found in a magazine five years ago.

There were hi-tech cars aplenty, from the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Toyota, running on hydrogen, biofuels or batteries - all technologies where the worth in terms of carbon saving is open to question, never mind the economics.

Where was the radical edge, the fresh vision?

It turned out to be just down the road: the three gadgets that caught my eye, at least, came from right here in Poland.

Standing in a corner like a beached cable car was an orange pod big enough to seat four or five people - clearly a transport device of some kind, though whether using the known laws of physics or something like teleportation was not immediately clear.

In fact, it's the prototype for a kind of urban transport that a wants to try out in a couple of cities, Opole and Rzeszow.

The cable-car or ski-lift comparison is pretty accurate. The pods would hang from rails above a city's major streets, moved along the rails by electric motors.

Every so often there would be a "siding" into which the pod could slide when people wanted to get off or on.

The developers reckon that with frictional forces lower than road-based transport, there should be benefits for energy use and carbon emissions, never mind urban smog.

At the far end of the hall next to some bales of straw sat looking like a small stove with a long tube coming out of it - a tube that ran for several metres just above the ground before twirling up and over with a theatrical flourish.

Every so often, the tube dispensed a light brown cylindrical lump.

Straw goes into the stove-like end - a kind of centrifuge - and emerges along the cylindrical tube, where it's compressed because it's being forced out against the material that's already in the tube. Dropping off the theatrically twirling end are briquettes of compressed straw which the inventors claim contain as much energy as lumps of hard coal, the staple fuel in these parts.

My third Polish exhibit was also, I think, my favourite: home-made solar heaters.

They come from the village of Kunkowce, where two years ago the Sporting Club Association set up a project called "Let's Catch the Sun".

With advice and practical help, 15 homes in the village now have home-made kit on their roofs which catches solar energy and heats water. Each is reckoned to cost about half as much as a commercial installation - though the association gave no indication of how efficient they are.

I'm not sure whether any of these ideas actually has a discernible impact on greenhouse gas emissions: I don't think that has been measured. But they might.

So might the developed in Israel that uses enzymes to bond earth to make a solid base for tarmac, cutting down on concrete use (cement making is large on greenhouse gas emissions) and minimising the transportation of hard core.

And so might , or India's pedal-powered irrigation pump.

As the delegates polished up their jargon in the main conference hall, it was good to see a little innovation at work on the sidelines.

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POZNAN, POLAND: "This is the best selling book of the conference," said Andrew Mitchell, brandishing a small red volume, when I bumped in to him on the fringes of a fairly loud demonstration.

Andrew is director of the - that's "canopy" as in forests, not as in tents - and a leading light in the movement to reward people in developing countries for looking after the tracts of forest that ameliorate atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide by processing it into oxygen.

The book is the Little Redd Book. It's not to be confused with the Little Red Book that Mao Zedong was reputed to carry almost everywhere, although as both purport to be distillations of wisdom on their chosen topic, you could perhaps see a parallel.

Redd with two Ds - or - is the hot property in climate change this year.

The problem with being a hot property, as Lewis Hamilton or Britney Spears might testify, is that everyone wants a piece of you.

Governments that stand to gain financially certainly want a piece of it - notwithstanding any genuine desire they might have to do something about the atmosphere's carbon dioxide levels. So do the companies that can see profits in the trading and consulting and monitoring that will go into a final package; and so do the indigenous peoples who were protesting as I chatted to Andrew.

The book is a compendium of the various proposals on Redd which have been submitted to the , the body that will eventually work out a set of rules on the issue.

Sixteen governments, three regional blocs and 13 non-governmental organisations have sent in proposals; and now, one of the UNFCCC's subsidiary bodies is thrashing through the various notions and trying to come up with a text that everyone can live with.

The proposals differ in several ways. How should finance be raised - through the buying and selling of credits, through mechanisms linked with but not part of the carbon market, or through voluntary funds? Should money be awarded nationally or locally?

Should the baseline for measuring deforestation be a historical one; and if so, what should be the date? If avoiding degradation is to be included, how should it be defined and measured?

And what, precisely, should be rewarded - the preservation of forests or the storage of carbon, which are not precisely the same thing?

Any combination of these parameters will provide bigger or smaller wins for the countries saving their trees. So politics enters the fray, just as it did during the long years after 1997 that negotiators spent trying to establish a rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol, when nations haggled long and hard over the precise definition of a tree.

So Costa Rica wants deforestation to be measured against a 1990 baseline - the same year against which greenhouse gas emissions are measured in the UN system. But Costa Rica has already done very well in protecting its forest, and therefore stands to gain from those years of protection.

Brazil wants rewards for slowing deforestation, as measure against a historical rate. But India argues this unfairly rewards "countries with historically high deforestation rates" - subtext, "unfairly rewards Brazil" - because all it has to do is make a bad thing a bit less bad.

And so on, and so on. Andrew has put the [pdf link] on the web, so you can peruse it at your leisure.

And the indigenous groups? Well, they were protesting against the removal of language from the working text that recognised the rights of indigenous forest dwellers.

"We are only asking for that the Redd text recognises the ," declaimed Tom Goldtooth, a US activist of Navajo and Lakota descent.

"We stand with our brothers and sisters in the forested regions in asking for a suspension of the Redd process."

They accused in particular Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US of scratching out the key words.

Andrew Mitchell was sympathetic. "Redd is one of the greatest opportunities to save the world's tropical forests, and to exclude people who spend their lives living in the forest and protecting the forest just seems perverse."

Maybe the text will go back in - maybe not. But the issue does illustrate how complex and politicised an apparently simple idea can become - sorry, scratch that, how complex it does become - once 190-odd countries start using it as a football.

Forests are not just carbon stores. They are home to people, and to animals and ecosystems. They provide and regulate fresh water, create local climates, protect huge tracts of land.

Ideally, I suppose, the Redd discussions should take all of these factors into account. If you're rewarding a country's forest protection because it stores carbon, why not also reward it for protecting monkey habitat, or safeguarding the watershed of a river that will irrigate fields downstream, or keeping indigenous cultures alive - always provided that you think those are good things, of course?

But that would make things even more complex, and more politicised. Then the wood really would start to obscure the trees.

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• - What's this?

I was hoping to blog today from the in Poznan, Poland, where I'm due to spend the rest of the week.

I had been intending to spend a few hours sampling the mood, taking the temperature, chewing the cud, and lots of other cliched things that journalists do when they arrive somewhere new and aren't completely sure what's going on, before delivering to you a distillation of the assembled wisdom.

However, which closed the runway at London's Stansted Airport this morning meant a cancelled flight, so I am writing this during a few hours back at my house before trying again.

So all I can do is to pick out a few of the themes that emerged during the first week of the meeting, and offer an initial take on what it looks like from a distance of many hundreds of kilometres.

As we all knew beforehand, there isn't going to be a major deal at the Poznan meeting - that's scheduled for the next one in Copenhagen in a year's time.

But several things can be resolved in Poznan, including raising and managing funds to help the poorest countries prepare for potential impacts of climate change, and setting up a process to pay countries with abundant forest to protect that forest.

On the first issue, a long-running dispute between developed and developing countries over how to manage the UN , which channels money from the international carbon market into climate protection, appears still to be a live issue.

The developed countries paying the money regard it as theirs; but so do the developing nations, who argue that it is merely what the west owes them for having created the problem of man-made climate change.

So last week saw from developing states - and the group of NGOs that acts with them - to having the World Bank involved in its management, or indeed in the management of any UN funds connected with climate change. They say that the bank is in the political pocket of the west, and that some of its development programmes effectively fund deforestation.

The fund contains nothing like the $50bn that development agencies believe is a necessary annual sum, which also grates with developing states.

But especially in straitened times, are developed countries going to cough up more - especially to a fund whose management they are not happy with? One Japanese delegate that rich governments could not become "the ATM for the world".

Discussions on appear to be throwing up some important ethical and philosophical dilemmas.

A good idea in principle, virtually everyone involved agrees, because deforestation accounts for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions () and is relatively cheap to fix.

But some groups charge that because they can effectively "buy" emission reductions abroad and continue with business as usual at home. Others say that it should be a priority because preserving forests intact has benefits for wildlife as well; the UN Environment Programme, to prove the point, released an last week showing that forest areas important for storing carbon also tend to be important ecologically.

But what about indigenous peoples who live in the forest? There appears to be quite a degree of concern that not enough priority is being given to their needs in the REDD discussions.

The first week's talks have brought fairly predictable condemnations from environment groups that western nations are not doing enough to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, either in the scale of the cuts they are contemplating or in the cuts they are actually implementing.

Perhaps the most significant events are taking place away from Poznan, as EU countries try to finalise their which will include a unilateral commitment to reduce emissions by 20%, or by 30% if a global deal materialises.

Saturday saw a where President Nicholas Sarkozy of France - which currently holds the EU presidency - tried to alleviate the fears of the Poles and others that the package would come with a crippling price tag.

That brought some progress but no final agreement - so we wait for the EU heads of state meeting later in the week in Brussels.

The outcome of that matters in Poznan because Poland - the leading critic of the EU package - is co-chairing the UN talks as host nation and if the EU is seen to be faltering in its commitment to curb greenhouse gas emissions, we can expect the rest of the world to be less enthusiastic.

From tomorrow, I'll do my best to keep you up to date with the substance and the froth of the Poznan talks from a closer vantage-point - assuming there are no further runway closures to contend with.

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As yesterday in Parliament, environmental groups were applauding.

They began lobbying for a bill to sort out the UK's seas about a decade ago; and as the Queen detailed, it's finally going to happen, with the scheduled to become law during the next parliamentary session.

The "strongly welcomed" the bill, though adding they would like it toughened. said it was "fantastic news", while for the it was an "historic moment".

You can understand the rapture. For an island nation with a historically strong association with the sea, a fishing industry under pressure on several fronts, oil and gas companies keen to find new fields, offshore wind farms set to become a mainstay of renewable energy programmes, a population that still likes to get to the beach when we can, a widespread interest in birds that depend on the sea, it is a bit odd that until now the UK hasn't had a systematic way of sorting out all the competing interests.

And that, basically, is what the bill is designed to do.

What should emerge is a system that prioritises fishing in important grounds, wind farms where there's a good wind resource and not too much bird life, recreation in places where people like to play, conservation in places where there are special things to conserve, and so on.

Of course there are caveats. And as the bill is largely "enabling legislation", setting the framework under which various agencies (notably the to-be-created Marine Management Organisation) will make the case-by-case decisions, a lot of local disputes probably lie ahead.

A good example is the , where the interests of dolphin conservationists and oil companies clash. Someone, somehow, is going to have to prioritise in these difficult areas.

Another potentially tricky issue concerns the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations. When I scanned the draft bill back in April, I reckoned that at least a quarter of its 700-plus pages dealt with questions such as which aspects would come under UK legislation and which would be devolved, how the various authorities would work together, and so on.

Scotland will have its own . It looks likely that that will cover waters out to 12 nautical miles from shore, with UK authorities taking over between 12 and 200 nautical miles; so let's hope they end up broadly seeing eye to eye.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Westminster bill is the dismantling of local Sea Fisheries Committees, and the establishment instead of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs).

Why interesting? Because potentially - and I stress potentially - it could lead to conservation groups and fishermen working together in ways that traditionally they haven't.

It's hard to exaggerate the degree of mutual antipathy that can exist between the two groups.

I have heard conservationists dismiss all fishermen as "cowboys who will rape the seas until there's nothing left"; and I have heard fishermen dismiss conservationists in terms that if I took out the all the profanities would consist of nothing but dots and dashes.

In October, I went to a meeting of the Common Language Group, a forum initiated by the industry body , which brings together people from all parts of the seafood supply chain, environmental groups, and governments.

Although the idea is to build dialogue and trust - an ambition which broadly seemed to be working, from my one visit - the recent had clearly provoked so much anger among fishermen that if a representative of (the body which lobbied for the ban) had walked in, he might well have ended up in a big frying pan being seared with a bit of garlic and lemon.

There has to be a better way. Fishermen do have an interest in conservation; and if the aggression and bitterness can be put to one side, it's entirely possible that fishermen's own expertise can be put to use as a conservation tool, and that conservation groups' international experience can introduce new ideas on managing fisheries into what can be hermetically sealed communities.

Just this week, for example, has been shown to reduce the bycatch of small and juvenile cod - the sort of practical advance that conservation groups are unlikely to make.

So if you let your imagination loose on this, you can foresee a day when conservation groups, fishermen, wind power companies, sailors and all the other interested parties begin to use this enabling legislation for their mutual good. Perhaps fishermen will advise tidal power companies where they'll find the strongest flows; perhaps windsurfers will help turbine manufacturers design sexy towers.

Or perhaps not; we will see.

When the Scottish government launched its marine bill consultation, Bertie Armstrong of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation said: "What must not happen is for Scotland's seas to turn into a glorified marine aquarium."

No-one actually wants that. Apart from anything else, I don't see much profit to be made running glass-bottom boat trips from Peterhead in December.

But Mr Armstrong's choice of words shows that the antipathy still resides. The day when that all ends will truly be an historic moment.

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If you like puzzles, see if you can complete this sequence:

1972 - Stockholm
1982 - Nairobi
1992 - Rio de Janeiro
2002 - Johannesburg
2012 - ???

As Rolf Harris might ask: can you see what it is yet?

If you live in the land of UN-speak where cities become synonymous with the conferences they have hosted you'll have decoded the sequence - the series of major summits on the human environment, or on environment and development, or on sustainable development, that have marked the last decades.

The question being asked now is:

And I'm not talking about something like the currently going on in Poland, or the in Rome; but something huge, all-encompassing, potentially epoch-making, which and , if not and , arguably were.

It's a proposal backed by the bloc, which has asked the UN General Assembly to commission another of these epics for 2012. The Brazilian government has offered to play host once more.

The reasons why another summit is needed are not hard to see. As the , virtually every indicator of the world's environmental health is pointing downhill.

Even if you're one of those people who believes that the human race's only responsibility is to protect its own interests, this should ring a few alarm bells when you tot up the implications for people who depend on fresh water, forests, fertile soil, clean air, and so on.

Some sustainable development professionals also argue that the failed to encapsulate humanity's need for a healthy environment, and that issues such as climate change and desertification in a way that is not reflected in existing international agreements.

The fragmentation of "the environment" into separate treaties has also brought its problems. Biofuels would always have made less sense in a body considering all environmental issues than they did purely in terms of climate change; and when we have more than 700 international environmental agreements, doesn't it make sense once in a while to join them up?

The main argument against holding a Rio+20 - or a Stockholm+40, or a Johannesburg+10, if you prefer - is also pretty self-evident.

In a nutshell, these past summits have not brought the sea-changes needed to put societies on a sustainable path.

At the global level, are still rising and at an alarming rate; continues unchecked. , the ambitious programme to integrate sustainability into decision-making at local level across the world, has disappeared from the political lexicon.

So, the argument goes, why waste time and resources on another big international jargon-fest that is likely to achieve equally little?

Others would argue that the various summits have brought concrete achievements - at least slowing the pace of environmental decline, if not halting it. They have given the impetus to international agreements such as the , which restricts the international movement of hazardous waste.

At the very least, they have brought environmental issues such as acid rain and deforestation to the forefront of government and public attention.

So will a Rio+20 happen? There is certainly appetite for it within some important governments and the NGO community, although in principle the UN is trying to minimise these big set-piece events, partly to save money.

If it does happen, what should be discussed? At a [pdf link] on the issue, I asked whether the expanding human population should be on the agenda; as , a bigger number of humans means more pressure on the planet's resources.

And what about the relationship between the various environmental treaties and the ? Is a sustainable global society achievable without unpicking that agreement?

So what do you think? Is it worth it? If it is, what should the priorities be?

I can't promise that your thoughts will travel further than this blog; but you never know.

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After becoming the first nation in the world to adopt "legally-binding" targets on greenhouse gas emissions last week, the UK claims another world first today with the publication of replete with advice on how those targets should be met.

As far as I can see, the government's new advisory body, , hasn't said much that you wouldn't have predicted from a working knowledge of the science and the government's views on the issue.

But the scale of reductions it's recommending in greenhouse gas emissions is still striking, as my colleague - at least a 20% cut within 12 years.

The committee thinks that can be done without closing airports or scrapping all coal-fired power stations or implementing a bicycles only policy for the school run.

As I have detailed , substantial changes in electricity generation are the strongest recommendations, and they are clearly going to be challenging if the government decides to adopt them.

Reactions from think-tanks and environment groups have generally been positive, although there are some areas of dissent, notably over coal-fired electricity generation - the committee says building new stations without should be permitted, on the understanding that they would have to adopt the technology by about 2025.

There is also some concern that the UK's share of international aviation and shipping aren't included in the five-yearly carbon budgets.

Anyway, details apart - for those you can refer to Roger's news article or my analysis piece as indicated above, or indeed to the report itself - what difference will the committee's recommendations make to the life of the average Briton?

Well, first you have to assume that the government endorses them - which it probably will - and then turns the vision into reality, which is less certain.

Fuel prices will rise, that is for sure; and that will push more people, perhaps as many as 1.7 million, into fuel poverty.

While this will not be pleasant for anyone concerned, you can argue that it's refreshing to hear government advisors admitting openly that tackling climate change does mean making certain things more expensive.

Perhaps more of us will choose electric when we buy a new car in 2020 - as many as 40% of us, according to the committee's chair Lord Turner. We'll have bells and whistles on them to alert pedestrians and prevent accidents as we glide along.

Logically, more of us should live in well-insulated houses, take public transport or cycle, inhale cleaner air and use electricity rather than gas to heat our homes and cook.

The committee thinks we will be a poorer country, but not by much.

But that is all in the realm of "if" at the moment. The government will release its official response by the middle of next year - perhaps approving carbon budgets at the same time as its more familiar fiscal budgets - and then we see more clearly where this low-carbon road is taking us.

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