South Africa should use its position as the host of the United Nation's 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) for global climate change negotiations in December, to highlight the vulnerabilities of the African continent to the effects of climate change.

Greenpeace Africa executive director Michelle Ndiaye Ntab said that officials should ensure that the event was a truly “African COP”.

Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo said that the level of ambition of the conference in Durban was a key question, and that stakeholders would need to decide on the objectives of the 2011 conference.

Hopes were high for a fair, ambitious and legally binding global climate change deal to come out of the 15th COP in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, and many were disappointed when this did not happen.

In contrast, the level of ambition was set very low for last year’s COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, and thus the smallest of developments were lauded.

“Cancun saved the United Nations multilateral process, not the environment,” noted Naidoo.

The South African government has not yet made a firm statement on where the level of ambition will be set, although indications are that a balanced approach is preferred.

Parties may look for specific areas of success, such as on finance, or forestry, or they could focus on an overall binding agreement.

Greenpeace urged the government not to get caught up with short-term political agendas, but rather to consider what scientists said was required to address climate change.

Naidoo said that an optimistic outlook should be taken for the negotiations, and reiterated that Durban should be a destination, and not just another stop in an endless road of climate change talks.

He also emphasised that Durban should not become a graveyard to bury the Kyoto Protocol.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds developed nation signatories to Greenhousegas (GHG) emission reduction targets, comes to an end in 2012.

The future of the Kyoto Protocol is in question, and it is not known what form the protocol will take in future, and whether or not it will be taken forward at all.

Greenpeace advocates a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, with the inclusion of the US as a signatory with emission reduction targets.

The nongovernmental organisation also suggested that developed nations should commit to cutting GHG emissions by at least 30% by 2020.

Member States of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would be meeting in Bangkok in early April, where the agenda for the months leading up to Durban, and future plans would likely be clarified and outlined.

Civil society organisations such as Greenpeace played a role in the negotiations, as there was usually a representative of civil society on a country’s negotiating team. Workshops were held with negotiators and presentations were made to them, in addition to the protest action which often took place outside of the meeting.