Breaking news - African nations have just "walked out" of the UNFCCC negotiations at the Bella Center, attempting to pull the plug on negotiations at this stage to avoid an even larger train wreak later this week.

Reportedly, this was not a dramatic walkout but was an influential procedural move.  The rest of the G77 developing nations briefly followed the African nations in the walkout, returning to the negotiations later on Monday.  

Apparently, over the weekend, climate conference President Connie Hedegaard and others agreed to move to more or less only negotiate under the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) track, minimizing the importance of work under the Kyoto Protocol negotiating track. 

KP and LCA are the two influential "branches" of the UNFCCC process.  The KP track includes signatories of the Kyoto Treaty, while LCA includes all Parties to the UN Convention, and is the track the U.S. can participate in, since we never ratified the Kyoto Protocol. 

Many developing nations feel strongly that commitments made to them under KP and the framework set out by KP should be the basis for continued negotiations, while developed nations would like to move forward through the LCA process.

African nations and others in the G77 demanded that strong parallel track work continues as planned, with KP issues taking priority over LCA.

Whether and when the KP and LCA tracks will be merged is an open question for this and possibly future UNFCCC negotiation rounds.  

Rebecca Lutzy is reporting live from Copenhagen.

Rebecca is the Content and Community Manager at The Energy Collective and Ph.D. candidate in Princeton University's Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy program, focused on climate and energy policy.