In November 2011, the UN invited delegates to discuss climate change at the COP17 Conference (17th Conference of Parties) in Durban, South Africa.

CNN wanted to make climate change topical, get people talking about the issues and drive interest to their coverage of the COP17 Conference.

CNN launched the ECOSPHERE Project: a living digital ecosystem growing on the Internet from tweets tagged with #COP17.

Every #COP17 tweet stimulated growth in one of the numerous plants representing topics like Sustainability or Carbon. The size, colour and growth rate of these plants gave users a fascinating real-time view of how the international conversation was evolving.

CNN invited people to plant a thought with hashtag #COP17 and brought the project to the COP17 Conference. Here a live digital installation connected delegates with contributions from all over the world – getting more people involved in a climate change conference than ever before.