Small and smaller developing countries are left wondering when and if their loud pleas for attention and action at each global conference will ever get due attention or yield required action. They are still pleading in Durban, but, who's listening? Nobody, it seems.

The developed nations promise to fund Climate Change projects, but fail to deliver. Now they cite the economic and financial crises facing the U.S. and Europe to justify their normal sloth. The major developing nations have varying interests. The result is that in the ocean of global debate, small fry like the Alliance of Small Island State (AOSIS) end up crying in the wilderness for attention to their plight while the bigger fish freely swim as if might is right. Their over 40 southern island nations are threatened by the rising seas resulting from melting glaciers in the north, but the distance of the victims from the cause of the woes blurs the reality of their plight in the eyes of many.

The U.S. and Europe are latching on to their economic woes to continue to backtrack on their commitments to help fund global climate change. They refuse to see and treat climate change as a long-term project, concentrating instead on the temporary financial ills. But the planet's future will not wait for the economic recovery of the developed world. China has committed itself to meet its own stated immediate, medium and long-term approach and commitments to climate change, despite the global financial crisis. In the near future, however, China will be re-classified as developed country and the international demands on it will change and its responsibilities will increase, which will also have consequences for the course of global climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding document in the world committing countries to lower emissions that contribute to global warming, is under threat of dying next year as the world's major emitters find reasons not to renew it in 2012. Developing countries are being called upon to do more to reduce their 57% contribution to emissions, but developed nations continue to stall on their commitments to help them fund the cost of their expected contribution to slowing down climate change.

As the world turns and climate continues to change, these international earth-saving conferences – from Rio to Copenhagen, Cancun to Durban – are increasingly turning into large, ongoing summits where governments, big and small, rich and poor, tend to agree to disagree on the most important issues. Halfway through, the Durban meeting hadn't yet yielded any decisions to grab world headlines or give hope to small island nations like mine around the world. But since "time and tide wait for no man" (as the old saying goes) the only thing all can agree too, in Durban and everywhere else, is that climate change will continue unchecked into 2012 and beyond, until and unless those best in a position to influence and accelerate the combat against it agree to meet their commitments, in time and in full.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

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