Around 60 countries pushed ahead on Thursday with a multi-billion-dollar scheme to reduce climate-changing emissions from deforestation, to which Germany added its support, British minister Joan Ruddock said on Thursday. "There was a tremendous mood of determination to get things done. I regard this as quite a breakthrough, actually," Ruddock, who is secretary of state for energy and climate ...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday demanded reforms of the United Nations and urged negotiations under a small group of countries to accelerate efforts to fight climate change. Sarkozy, opening a one-day conference on deforestation, stood by the UN, saying there was "no alternative strategy" to a forum that gave all nations, rich and poor, a voice in a global ...

China and India announced on Tuesday they would back the 11th-hour climate accord hammered out in Copenhagen in December, removing doubts that the world's two most populous countries fully supported the contested deal. Ahead of a January 31 deadline, China -- the world's No. 1 greenhouse-gas emitter -- informed the UN of voluntary actions it planned to take to curb ...

Senator John Kerry vowed the United States would overcome the odds and approve action on climate change, as the United Nations set talks for April to help break a diplomatic logjam. Without offering a timetable, Kerry on Tuesday rejected assertions that it had become politically impossible for the Senate to finalize the first US nationwide plan to curb carbon emissions ...