Copenhagen - "Climate change is an opportunity to deal with all the issues of equity and justice that we have been struggling for all along," said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International in an interview with IPS on Thursday in Copenhagen.

"And perhaps this is why there is such resistance from rich countries: they know that if they do the right thing in Copenhagen, they have to begin to share economic power and to have a more equitable trading system because all of those things have to follow, otherwise you cannot deal with climate change."

Q: With less than two days before the end of negotiations in Copenhagen, world leaders seem reluctant to commit to a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Why?

A: I think that developed countries are still in denial about their responsibility, even if they formally acknowledge it. The bottom line is we have global economic apartheid and essentially what we are seeing here is a sort of climate apartheid.

I want to stress that it is the developed countries’ governments that do not care. The publics in the developed countries see the injustice of it and I think that not only do rich country governments betray the people of poor countries but they are also betraying the citizens of their own countries and they are betraying democracy.

Negotiations on a deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions and head off global warming were suspended Monday morning in Copenhagen, with poorer countries charging wealthier nations aren't prepared to make necessary cuts in CO2 emissions.

Copenhagen, Denmark - The final week of Copenhagen global warming negotiations has begun amid rancor between rich and poor nations, with a negotiating bloc of mostly African countries complaining that it looks like any deal will not be tough enough on major emissions producers in the developed world.

The complaints, from the G-77 group of nations that is currently chaired by Sudan, led the Danish hosts to suspend negotiations on Monday morning. Talks are expected to resume in the afternoon on what some are hoping will be a politically binding agreement on curbing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Signs that crunch time is coming emerged over the weekend inside and outside the cavernous Bella Center in Copenhagen, where the talks are being held. Outside, some 40,000 protesters marched on the center on Saturday, calling for immediate action to deal with global warming. The march itself went largely without incident, although police say that additional protests in the city center, away from the negotiating site, led to some 950 arrests. Protesters appeared again on Sunday, leading to an additional 200 arrests.

Inside, the key bone of contention is over whether to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which most industrial nations promised to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, with a more robust agreement that would also include emissions reduction targets for poorer nations. There are also talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2013 if a new agreement including all nations isn't signed.

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.