This event is an opportunity for the general public to meet with international and national wetland center partners visiting from Russia, Iowa, Texas and the United Kingdom. [...] Russia has only recently moved from a system of strictly protected nature areas where people were excluded, to a more inclusive system of encouraging and promoting outdoor environmental education.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was on a whirlwind trip to Brazil on Thursday to cement trade ties with South America's biggest economy. She also used the occasion to urge Brazil to take the necessary steps to protect the Amazon rainforest, calling the country "key" to controlling global climate change.

A group of Islamic experts urged the world's 1.6 billion Muslims on Tuesday to do more to fight global warming, in a new example of religious efforts to galvanise action before a UN climate summit in Paris in December. Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said religion was a guide for action. 

Climate change has been at the forefront of the president’s recent diplomatic agenda. It should stay there. This week, U.S. President Barack Obama made his second visit to India. As during his trip to China last year, where he signed a landmark agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change ranked near the top of the agenda.

Europe is launching a major diplomatic push for an ambitious deal on global warming, mobilising A-list celebrities and tens of thousands of diplomats to exert “maximum pressure” on key countries in international climate negotiations.

On Thursday night, climate negotiations had turned into a script for a thrilling film on international intrigue. A document so far held secret  was inadvertently leaked well before it was planned to be released by the United nations climate change convention secretariat. That set off a series of high-drama sequences which by night time, when talks were suspended again, had plunged the conference into uncertainty.