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Thousands of government delegates and lobbyists will spend the next two weeks crowded into a conference hall in Warsaw, Poland, attempting to inch the international community one step closer to a climate change deal.  

Haven't we been here before?

The answer is yes, pretty much every year. The conversation has been going on for some time. Negotiations on a deal on climate change were launched back in December 1990 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was formally created four years later.

191 countries are now 'parties' to the convention. And every December, all the parties meet up for a two-week negotiating session. This year, it's Poland's turn to host.

Aim of the talks

The ultimate aim of the talks is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere "at a level that will limit dangerous interference with the climate system". In order to achieve that, the participating countries have to agree to targets limiting their future greenhouse gas emissions.

Hitting the targets requires limiting the amount of fossil fuels countries are allowed to burn. Other strands of the negotiations aim to incentivise countries with large forest resources not to chop them down; or provide more finance to developing countries both to compensate for the impacts of climate change, and adapt to the changes it will impose on them.

Low expectations

The talks have had their ups and downs over the years - to say the least. Four years ago, hopes were high that the world would finally sign a new treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark. But the Copenhagen talks spectacularly collapsed, dealing a blow to the idea that the world could ever reach a collective deal on tackling climate change.

There's been a recovery of sorts since then. In South Africa in 2011, delegates adopted the so-called Durban Platform - an agreement to forge a new treaty by 2015, which will come into force in 2020.

Expectations for the talks are now kept deliberately low - a good way of avoiding disappointment. If the talks don't actually collapse this year, it will probably be viewed as a success.

Targets and money

Negotiations at the UNFCCC talks usually focus around two key issues - targets, and money.

The previous agreement, known as the Kyoto Protocol, committed signatories to a central target for emissions reductions, shared out amongst the industrialised countries blamed for causing climate change. Poorer countries, historically responsible for far fewer greenhouse gas emissions, were not subject to the same obligations.

The deal which will (theoretically) replace Kyoto probably won't make the same distinctions between richer and poorer - although different countries are recognised as bearing different levels of responsibility for climate change. The logic is that some 'poorer' countries, like China, are in a radically different situation than they were in 1997.

Negotiations in Copenhagen foundered on the issue of whether poorer countries - and particularly China - should have to sign up to targets when developed countries were failing to take action to reduce their own emissions.

A "looser agreement" is now emerging for the new deal, according to the BBC. This will allow countries to set their own targets, but subject them to some review by other countries.

Developed countries have also promised to raise $100 billion a year to help poorer nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But they haven't agreed how they are going to do it.

The World Bank says it's " absolutely critical" that the world reaches agreement on this issue - but it's not clear whether it's going to happen.

Finally, developed countries have said they are willing to provide "loss and damage" compensation to developing countries for the future damage they are likely to suffer as a result of climate change. A decision on the legal framework for loss and damage is expected this year in Warsaw.

Talks trundle along

The talks are the first since the UN's international body on climate change released its latest summary of the predicted impacts of climate change. Amongst other things, the report suggested that scientists are more confident than before about human influence on the climate.

But scientific findings may have less impact over the next fortnight than pictures of the devastating storm that hit the Philippines over the weekend.

This morning, the Philippines' lead negotiator gave an emotional address to the opening session of the summit - in which he said he would stop eating until participants make "meaningful" progress, in solidarity with the suffering in his country. UN Climate talks have a history for prompting emotional interventions.

Warsaw is likely to see some progress - pretty much every year some aspect of climate diplomacy moves forward slightly. But experts familiar with the process are not predicting any massive breakthroughs.

Source: The Carbon Brief