Location: Lima

Focusing development and traditional finance towards low carbon energy efficient infrastructure will fight climate change, help the world meet sustainability targets and boost global economic productivity, the world’s finance ministers have been told.

International negotiators at the Lima climate change talks have agreed on a plan to fight global warming that would for the first time commit all countries to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. 

The first donations from developing countries to the Green Climate Fund mark the modest beginnings of change in the relationship between North and South in the fight against climate change. EurActiv France reports. 

Extreme weather conditions, famine and air pollution are all factors in the rising climate change death toll. The drastic public health consequences of climate change could provide the UN with the impetus it needs to agree on an ambitious new set of climate goals in 2015. However, critics remain unconvinced. EurActiv France reports. 

Swelling CO2 emissions from coal-fired power generation hurt Germany’s score in the latest global climate protection index compiled by the NGO Germanwatch. But the government’s latest action plan could bring about positive change. EurActiv Germany reports.

India’s climate protection performance has been ranked above nine European Union countries, including the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland, by climate campaigners.

As the UN Climate Conference got under way in Lima last week, the EU set out its stall with an ambitious call for "quantifiable and comparable" national commitments on the reduction of CO2 emissions; a position refuted by some developing countries, who see the odds stacked against them. EurActiv France reports. 

By approving a new package on energy savings, the German government still hopes to achieve its climate targets for 2020, and boost the economy with billions in investment. EurActiv Germany reports.

The UN's secretary-general has called on EU leaders to set an example and agree on an ambitious 2030 target at a Council Summit in June, that can be taken to a UN conference in Lima three months later, and shape a global, legally-binding treaty by the end of 2015.