The Copenhagen climate change talks kicked off on Monday. A Q&A on the key areas that will define success or failure.

Copenhagen - Delegates left the Bali climate change talks in December 2007 with high hopes that a grand bargain on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be secured by now.

But today, as the latest round of climate change talks begin with representatives from more than 190 countries gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, expectations are far more modest.

The biggest decision – a binding international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions – is likely to be pushed off until next December, when another round of climate talks are scheduled for Mexico City. Nevertheless, two weeks in Copenhagen will yield insights into global efforts to control industrial emissions and the warming of the planet.

Below are some key questions:

What might success in Copenhagen look like?

Low expectations at the start of the conference may not be a bad thing.

"I think there was a sense all along that we were not going to be able to reach an international binding legal agreement in Copenhagen," says Eileen Claussen, who heads the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Va. But only in the last week did leaders acknowledge this. The results may disappoint some, she said, but added that it's a more realistic track.

Rome, Italy - Women are known to be innovators when it comes to responding to climate change. The question is how to ensure that the role of women and gender equality are reflected in climate change agreements.

Women in poor countries will be the most affected by climate change effects, according to the 2009 State of the World Population report, released last month by the United Nations Population Fund. This is because women comprise the majority of the world’s farmers, have access to fewer income- earning opportunities, and have limited or no access to technology.

To understand how far women are involved in decision making on climate change, TerraViva spoke with Lorena Aguilar Revelo, global senior gender advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which is a part of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance launched at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali in December 2007.

IPS: Women are said to be the major agents of change, but their role is still not recognised, according to the gender and climate alliance.

LORENA AGUILAR REVELO: Women have been playing a major role in the management of natural resources for centuries, dealing with the agricultural sector. In countries of Africa, in Congo for example, they produce 73 percent of the food and in Africa as a whole 50 percent of the food that is being consumed on the continent.

Unfortunately, when you look at the other data you see that women only own one percent of the land worldwide; or when you look at the money from the new financing mechanism – or the previous financing mechanism – associated with climate change, you don’t find women as major beneficiaries.

Some 8,000 kilometres from the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Native American environmental experts from 66 tribes came together at a summit here this week to address the most pressing needs in their communities - problems, all emphasised, that know no geographic boundaries.

These include water and air pollution, superfund cleanup, mining and illegal dumping, as well as the impacts of climate change.

Increasingly frequent "100-year" floods in Oklahoma, the disappearance of medicinal plants, the uncharacteristic unreliability of monsoon season in New Mexico, and diminished snow pack on sacred peaks have left most tribal people with little doubt that climate change is already here.

"There are those who still rely on traditional agriculture for their livelihood and for ceremonial purposes - the growing of corn, the harmonious relationship between the seasons," said Milton Bluehouse of the New Mexico Environment Department, who is also a member of the Navajo Nation.

"Global warming impacts our cultures strongly. In Navajo country, for example, if there's no snow on the mountain, we can't have our yeibichei dances," he told IPS.

As delegates for climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, prepare to craft the outlines of a new global-warming treaty, a controversy over the hacked e-mails of some climate researchers is triggering calls for greater transparency in the UN body that provides governments with scientific advice on the issue.

The e-mails have raised questions about the credibility of some climate researchers’ work and revived criticism from those who say global warming is exaggerated. Though most scientists insist the e-mails don’t undermine climate-change theory, several call for greater transparency in the field.

Measures they’d like to see range from ensuring that all scientists have access to raw data used in climate science to requiring that the assessments of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appear along with something akin to a dissenting minority report.

“Climategate,” as some label the controversy, concerns at least 1,000 e-mails and files leaked or hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in Britain.

Many of the e-mails are innocuous. But others depict a small, influential group of scientists – several of whom work on global temperature trends over the past 1,500 years – trying to prevent skeptics of their work from gaining access to raw data used.

Viterbo, Italy - "Angry" is not the adjective that comes to mind when you first meet Nelly Damaris Chepkoskei.

The immaculately dressed 53-year-old Kenyan is generous with her time and with the smiles that light up her beautiful face and never misses a chance to crack a joke before punctuating it with hearty chuckles.

But the rage wells up when she speaks about how her life as a farmer in the Kericho District of Western Kenya has changed over the last 20 years.

She is angry because deficient rainfall has slashed the yields of her once-plentiful crops. She is angry because she is struggling to provide for her family. And, above all, she is angry because she believes that her troubles are due to climate change caused by rich nations burning carbon to fuel lifestyles that, in relation to hers, are lavish.

"It used to be a high yield area. There used to be rain throughout the year. But now the rains can fail up until November. Food production is down by three-quarters," she told IPS at the 'Greenaccord' conference in the Italian city of Viterbo, near Rome.

"We have tea as a cash crop, maize for food and sometimes sell the surplus, (as well as) beans and vegetables. We used to have so many heads of cattle but now the grass has dried up and so we can only keep two or three for good milk production.