Finally, after many climate summits aimed at negotiating a global compact to succeed the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP 17) at Durban has arrived at an agreement.

The current phase of climate change negotiations have now come to an end with the Durban Platform announcement of a new round of negotiations to arrive at a legally binding commitments for all countries by 2015, and implementation starting from 2020.

The climate summit in Copenhagen a year ago inspired many catchy nicknames starting with “hopenhagen” to portray early expectations that it would deliver a solution to the climate crisis, and later “nopenhagen” and the famous “flopenhagen” capturing its failure.