JOIN THE 10,000km JOURNEY FROM NORWICH TO DURBAN 2011
From Norwich to Durban
The Greenhouse is organising a sponsored virtual journey to the next International Climate Change Conference (COP17), which will take place in Durban, South Africa at the end of November. It is approximately 10,000km to Durban, so if a hundred people journey for 100km during October and November or a 1,000 people journey 10km, we will all reach Durban and achieve the journey. Those taking part can also help raise sponsorship to enable the Greenhouse to develop its climate change education work.
For a Sponsorship form email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with Norwich to Durban as the subject
Sponsor Sylvia's bike ride:
Slyvia will cycle 100km during October and November:
Whoever you are, wherever you are, join the Journey
You could walk (1km is about 4,000 steps) or cycle 10km, jog 1km a day during October and November 2011 or run 20km on one day. Or swim as far as you can over a week. The journey might be a special event, organised with friends. Or you might prefer to collect sponsorship for the journey you make to work everyday for one day, a week, or a month? You decide whatever activity suits you best.
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Join us by emailing us This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your name, distance and mode of transport
The Conference of the Parties (COP 17) will take place in Durban, South Africa from 28th November to 9th December, and aims to create a second round of global commitments. The international Kyoto Climate Change Protocol was initially adopted on 11 December 1997 and formally ends in 2012. The expectations for any major outcomes in Durban are considered to be low. Those rich and major developing countries strongly opposed to a second round are arguing that abandoning the process in favour of separate national pledges is the way forward. Building on the Kyoto Protocol is, however, vital. The protocol contains all the necessary elements for monitoring, compliance, finance, technical co-operation and economic efficiency.
There is no other institutional structure waiting to be discovered that isn't already contained within - or is compatible with - a reformed version of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto architecture took years to negotiate, refine and ratify. There is no time left to start from scratch again and, despite the Protocol's many flaws, it can and does hold Governments around the world to account.
Progressive European nations, including the UK, have already committed to delivering domestic emissions reduction to 2020, well beyond the period of the second commitment, and Europe can and should commit, without fear or favour of the wider international negotiations. Without Kyoto, Europe will have removed the best lever it has to bring the US and China into play. If Kyoto is abandoned, the EU will earn the opprobrium of the developing world for the final climate betrayal and it will play into the hands of the corporate US climate sceptics and the OPEC countries by destroying the only legally binding set of global climate rules that could deliver the accepted goal of a +2°C future.
Two years ago the Copenhagen (COP 15) climate conference revealed the limits of bottom-up action. At best, the Copenhagen pledges, which are not binding, created an even chance of exceeding +3.5o-4°C temperature rise by the middle of the century. This is better than the +6o-8°C which Copenhagen clearly sought to contain, but the situation is still catastrophic.
The majority of countries agree with the EU's approach. The most vulnerable countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the small island states all back a top-down architecture covering all countries. Only the US, China, India, Venezuela and the OPEC countries are really holding out. And even China and India have said they would (eventually) join a binding regime if the US took stronger action.
For more information on COP 17 click here.
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