COP17 Durban

COP17 was the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Durban, South Africa from 28 November to 11 December 2011 (negotiations ran into the early hours of 11 December). It was presided over by South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

Durban produced a package of outcomes commonly called the Durban Platform:

• The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP): parties agreed to launch a new negotiating track to develop "a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force" applicable to all parties, to be adopted by 2015 and to enter into force by 2020. This mandate ultimately produced the Paris Agreement in 2015.
• Second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol: parties agreed in principle to a second commitment period beginning 1 January 2013, though Canada, Japan, and Russia declined to take on new targets. The specifics were finalised at COP18 in Doha (2012).
• Operationalisation of the Green Climate Fund (GCF): the GCF's governing instrument was adopted, allowing the fund created at COP16 Cancún to begin functioning.
• Progress on the Adaptation Committee, technology mechanism, and REDD+ safeguards.

Durban is often cited as a turning point because it broke the long-standing "firewall" between Annex I (developed) and non-Annex I (developing) country obligations established under the 1992 Convention and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. For the first time, large emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil accepted a process that would lead to legally relevant commitments applicable to them.

The conference was marked by a dramatic late-night standoff between EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Indian Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan over the legal character of the future instrument, resolved by the compromise phrase "agreed outcome with legal force."