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Climate negotiators have agreed a pact that would, for the
first time, force all the biggest polluters to take action
on greenhouse gas emissions, but critics said the action plan
was not aggressive enough to slow the pace of global warming.
The package of accords extended the Kyoto Protocol, the only
global pact that enforces carbon cuts, agreed the format of
a fund to help poor countries tackle climate change and mapped
out a path to a legally binding agreement on emissions reductions.
However, many small island states and developing nations
at risk of being swamped by rising sea levels and extreme
weather said the deal marked the lowest common denominator
possible and lacked the ambition needed to ensure their survival.
Agreement on the package, reached in the early hours of Sunday
morning (11th Dec), avoided a collapse of the talks and spared
the blushes of host South Africa, whose stewardship of the
two weeks of often fractious negotiations came under fire
from rich and poor countries.
"We came here with plan A and we have concluded this meeting
with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children
and our grandchildren to come," said South African foreign
minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who chaired the talks.
"We have made history," she said, bringing the hammer down
on Durban conference, the longest in two decades of UN climate
negotiations.
Delegates agreed to start work next year on a new legally
binding treaty to cut greenhouse gases to be decided by 2015
and to come into force by 2020.
The process for doing so - called the Durban Platform
for Enhanced Action - would "develop a new protocol, another
legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force" that
would be applicable under the UN climate convention.
That phrasing, agreed at a last-ditch huddle in the conference
centre between the European Union, India, China and the United
States, was used by all parties to claim victory.
Britain's energy and climate secretary Chris Huhne said the
result was a great success for European diplomacy. "We've
managed to bring the major emitters like the US, India and
China into a roadmap which will secure an overarching global
deal," he said.
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