THE HAGUE - While some are reading the last rites of the Kyoto Protocol, others are actively working worldwide to finalise the commitments made in 1997, and to take decisive steps toward curbing climate change.

One thing is certain - we are caught up in a race against time, as expressed by most Latin American and Caribbean countries when they recently issued an urgent global call: ''There will be no Rio + 10 without Kyoto.''

Diverse and multifaceted, the region wants to take on the challenges of climate change as an informed actor. The Latin American multimedia project Tierramérica, produced by IPS with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has joined in the efforts to take on this creative and complicated task.

In this special edition, Tierramérica reports on the state of the world as it heads to the Sixth Conference of Parties (COP6) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the regional political scenarios and priorities of the talks.

The ''father of Gaia theory,'' James Lovelock, asserts here that the only practical solution to mitigating climate change is nuclear energy, while Harvard academic Theodore Panayotou insists that ''the North must compensate the South.''

Several experts, including Costa Rica's René Castro and Colombia's Thomas Black, reflect on key issues of COP6: the role of forests, the Clean Development Mechanism, and supplementarity.

And the increasingly influential voice of civil society is heard here through indigenous peoples, who demand to be included in COP6, and that the negotiations take their rights into consideration, especially their territorial rights.