A few interesting and offbeat moments culled from the climate change summit.
US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have already expressed their intention to attend the 15th conference of signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change slated to kick off on December 9.
The climate accord secured for India a place at the high table in recognition of its importance for the rest of the world, says Subir Roy.
Alarmed by the confusion created by the public expression of divergent opinions by his key advisors on climate change, the prime minister summoned Saran and Ramesh and asked them to put their heads together and come forward with an agreed text that would reflect both their concerns, a senior government official confirmed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday India would continue to work with like-minded people to make the Copenhagen climate change conference a success.
How the UN's flagship climate summit lost its direction and what's at stake.
One hundred-and-ninety-two countries have signed the climate change convention.
The Conference of Parties must come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
The overwhelming feeling at the end of COP 27 was that despite decades of meetings and landmark accords, like the Paris Agreement, the world was still not doing enough to slow the climate crisis, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Challenges posed by climate change hit centre stage in 2009 which saw the government doing a flip-flop ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit even as the Opposition and experts alleged that India succumbed to pressure from rich nations on emission cuts.
The divergent utterances by environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh and prime minister's special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran have created a good deal of ambiguity within and outside the country over the government's strategy for these talks.
With less than two months to go for the climate-change summit in Copenhagen, India has resolved to re-brand itself as a deal-maker.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said getting a binding agreement sealed on climate change was among his top priorities for the year after the Copenhagen conference that marked "an important step forward".
The meeting between Dr Singh and Sarkozy on climate change assumes significance as it came just ten days before the Copenhagen Summit on the issue.
"From the Indian point of view, if I were a politician, I'd continue to play it hard," explains Mike Hulme, professor at the University of East Anglia's prestigious climate change programme. "From a rational perspective, India has to do what's best for its people."
Climate Challenge India, a climate change mobilisation effort by Bangalore-based NGO Center for Social Markets has produced a film titled In Good Company: Corporate India and the Climate Challenge that partly tries to answer the question but also raises some red flags on the issue. The film was launched in May at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. As CSM's founder and climate change campaigner Malini Mehra explains that the film was a labour of love.
Some of the world's biggest polluters, the US, China, European Union and India, have reiterated their previous pledges of cutting emissions by 2020 that were widely regarded as weak, especially the 17 per cent reduction of carbon emissions from 2020 levels proposed by the US.
The developing countries fear that the mysterious draft prepared by Denmark would be sprung upon hours before the high-level segment of climate talks begins, making it difficult for any world leader to oppose.
Five top United Nations officials have urged world leaders to "seal the deal" at Copenhagen in December on an ambitious new climate change pact aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
A top US delegate at Copenhagen summit denied the possibility that hacked e-mails had made the case for sceptics stronger and said the incident would not affect the fate of climate change bill in the American Senate.
Global warming could cause the death of a quarter of a million children next year as a result of natural disasters causing an increase in injuries, water-borne diseases and starvation.
The Indian delegation is led by Special Envoy to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Shyam Saran. The first meeting since the leaders of the Major Economies met in L'Aquila, Italy on July 9, the two-day meeting would be chaired by Michael Froman, the Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs.
Al Gore committed a blunder at the Copenhagen climate change summit by claiming that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
'The Paris Conference is a decisive meeting on climate change.' 'Negotiating an agreement between 196 countries is indeed a challenge.' 'If we go beyond 2°C, the consequences will be extremely difficult to deal with.'The poor are the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change.'
'It is absolutely critical on pure economic terms, but it's also smart politically, because a recent survey reported that 73 percent of Indians view climate change as the most pressing global concern,' US Secretary of State John Kerry tells a high-power audience in Washington, DC.
A report released at the Copenhagen climate change conference ) has listed ten species likely to suffer huge losses due to global warming.This makes climate change an "additional and major threat."
India is likely to announce its targets for the Paris deal by September-end.
So far, major emitters are far from curbs on emissions on a scale outlined by the IPCC.
Senior journalist Darryl D'Monte reports exclusively for Rediff.com from Paris.
Criticising the Copenhagen Climate Summit for being "limited to a group of countries", Bolivia will organise an alternative international talks in April on the issue.
India should accept equal per capita emission quotas.
Preparations for Copenhagen is on full swing. Minister Jairam Ramesh met 5 MPs to discuss India's approach.
India decided to cut down its carbon emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020 in the run up to the Copenhagen summit, shortly after a similar declaration by China.
Talks on global climate finance virtually ground to a halt last week at COP29, the annual United Nations (UN) Climate Change event in Baku, Azerbaijan, as the developed world, led by the European Union (EU), and developing countries including India, Brazil, South Africa, and a clutch of island nations and African countries faced a wide chasm between their expectations. This has raised doubts about whether an agreement can be reached this week or whether talks will spill over to COP30, to be held next year in Benem, Brazil.
Ban Ki-moon said he is encouraged that more than 105 heads of state and government are committed to participate in the meeting of world leaders on the 18th of this month.
"Climate change is a major global challenge. But it is not of our making," Modi said.
With 'Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his way to the airport' and the 'Chinese skipping negotiations', US President Barack Obama said on Thursday the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit was on the brink of a complete collapse, before he decided to take a chance to give it a final push.
Developed and developing countries are very different and they are different from variety of reasons on climate change.
Under his leadership, India launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change, passed the landmark Forest Rights Act to protect the rights of tribal communities and established the National Green Tribunal to safeguard the environment through swift legal action.
In defining a new and nuanced stance on India's negotiating position at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may have left some at home dissatisfied but his perspective appears to have been defined by a larger view of how India should deal with global challenges.
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