In November/December 2011 the 17th annual World Climate Conference (COP 17) was scheduled to take place in Durban, South Africa. The COP17 is the single most important convention in matters of the worldwide climate protection policies and stands in line with the trailblazing conference in Kyoto (COP3) in 1997.

It goes without saying that CNN International, as the worlds leading news cooperation, always covers this event of global significance. In 2011 CNN planned to expand it´s coverage since COP17 was leading up to Rio+20 in the summer of 2012.

Despite the importance of the subject, CNN International noticed in prior years that viewership of the World Climate Conference coverage declined.

One factor being, that the public lost faith in big, international conferences on environmental issues, since they failed to deliver significant results in recent years (e.g. COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark and COP16 in Cancun, Mexico).

Another important factor was, that the important target-group of young, active, well connected and green savvy opinion leaders tend to get their information from independent, non-mainstream media and topic-relevant blogs.