A package of pacts approved to combat climate change at UN Conference in Durban

• Negotiators at the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, have approved a package of agreements to combat global climate change.
  
  
• The biggest achievements was the approval of a European Union plan to negotiate a future legal deal to combat climate change.
  
  
• The agreement calls for parties to end negotiations on a future pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 and to implement the new regime no later than 2020.
  
  
• The future deal will replace the Kyoto Protocol, an existing legal framework that was enacted in 2007 and was due to expire next year. 
  
  
• Governments that are part of Kyoto, including the EU, agreed in Durban to a second commitment period to the protocol that will last five to eight years, though Russia, Japan and Canada have said they will not take part.