The UN Climate Change Conference held in Warsaw in November 2013 had an inauspicious start. From the beginning, the conference was overshadowed by criticism of the host nation's attachment to coal, along with walkouts by pressure groups and backpedalling by Japan and Australia on previous climate commitments. And then in the middle of proceedings, much to the bemusement of delegates and commentators alike, conference president Marcin Korolec was replaced as Poland's Environment Minister by a proponent of hydraulic fracturing — 'fracking' — for shale-gas extraction.

However, some important decisions were made at the summit. For example, the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ has been established to help developing nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Although the details are yet to be hammered out, the framework includes financial rewards for countries that successfully reduce emissions by protecting their remaining forests.

Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines just before the meeting began, spotlighting the thorny issue of 'loss and damage'. Although rich, developed countries have pledged millions of dollars to the Adaptation Fund to support the poor nations vulnerable to climate change impacts, they are predictably chary of calls for international legal structures that might make them liable as a consequence of their past or present greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, the Warsaw conference agreed to establish an international mechanism 'to provide the most vulnerable populations with better protection against loss and damage caused by both extreme weather events and slow-onset events such as rising sea levels.'

The aim of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is for a final universal climate agreement to be signed in Paris in 2015. The new international agreement, effectively replacing the Kyoto Protocol, should come into force from 2020. But will it be so watered down through compromise as to be ineffective? Following the Warsaw meeting, Nicholas Stern, author of the 'Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change' and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at London School of Economics, released the following statement: “Although some progress has been made at this summit, the actions that have been agreed are simply inadequate when compared with the scale and urgency of the risks that the world faces from rising levels of greenhouse gases, and the dangers of irreversible impacts if there is delay.”

We will find out soon enough how well international governments have been listening.