The outcome of the Durban climate negotiations should be balanced, fair and credible and should strengthen the multilateral rules-based response to climate change, South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said at the opening of the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17) meeting on Monday.

The Cancun agreements, reached at COP 16 in Mexico, must be operationalised, she said, including the establishment of the key mechanisms and institutional arrangements.

COP 17, in Durban, would be a “decisive moment” and would require decisions to be made in the next two weeks that would shape the “now and immediate future” of the world.

Nkoana-Mashabane was sworn in as President elect of COP 17.

The previous president, Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Patricia Espinosa said there was “certainly more work to do on climate change”.

“We need to provide all the elements needed to take a gradual step towards a new climate change regime.”

Espinosa said it was critical for governments to find and design public policies that effectively reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, while being economically reliable.

In affirming a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol or a new multilateral rules-based agreement, Espinosa said this did not mean the distinction between the developed and developing countries should disappear.

“In the next two weeks we must deliver results. The future of millions of people, mostly in the poorest countries, depends on our decisions. There is a political will and a keen sense of awareness in climate change issues,” Espinosa said.