Climate talks reach new global accord

The Kyoto climate treaty was kept alive after negotiators at a United Nations climate change conference brought the talks back from the brink of collapse with a compromise deal to work towards a new global pact to reduce carbon emissions.

The nearly 200 nations at the Durban meeting agreed on Sunday that the new arrangement would be in place by 2015 and in force from 2020. Importantly, it is to include the world’s top emitters – China, the US and India.

The fraught two-week discussions centred on a European Union plan to extend the Kyoto protocol, key provisions of which are due to expire at the end of next year. The EU had insisted it would only do so if there were a consensus at the conference on a “road map” to a new, legally binding global pact to share the burden of reducing emissions.

Kyoto binds around 40 wealthy countries to commitments on emissions, and the EU, poorer nations most vulnerable to the impact of climate change, and others have aggressively pushed for a more comprehensive arrangement.

But disputes over the wording of draft proposals threatened to derail the process, with India particularly reluctant to commit to a legally binding arrangement before the details of the new pact are known.

A resolution was finally reached as the talks stretched into the early hours of Sunday morning after the EU and India agreed to replace the contentious phrase “legal outcome” – considered too broad by the EU and others – to “outcome with legal force.”

China called the result a “positive signal” but added more work needed to be done. Xie Zhenhua, the Chinese chief negotiator in Durban, praised the agreement for addressing developing countries’ concerns.

But Mr Xie also criticised developed countries for a lack lack of political will to lower their emissions and provide funds and technology transfer to developing countries. “We hope that the developed countries present political sincerity and further raise the level of their emission reduction pledges,” he said, according to Xinhua, the official news agency.

EU officials described the deal as “historic”.

“This is a great success for European diplomacy,” said Chris Huhne, UK climate secretary. “We’ve managed to bring the major emitters like the US, India and China into a road map which will secure an overarching global deal.”

The talks ran well beyond their Friday deadline and the agreement was finally reached after Indian, European and other officials held an informal huddle during a break in a heated plenary session to agree on the last-minute re-phrasing of the proposals.

However, other officials and non-governmental agencies said the language was still too weak and open to interpretation.

“It is going to be a fight [at future conferences] because going forward you have to interpret ‘outcome with legal force’ – what does that actually mean?” said Karl Hood, foreign minister of Grenada, chair of an alliance of small island states, which are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

He said he was “not very happy” with the agreement, but added: “I think this conference was groundbreaking in that we are able to get some sort of legal framework outside of the KP [Kyoto protocol] that is going to cover those not under the KP.”

Under the package agreed in Durban, Kyoto will now be extended for a second period of either five or eight years, which will be decided next year.

Connie Hedegaard, European Commission climate commissioner, said the crucial issue was that “all big economies, now all parties, have to commit in the future in a legal way and that’s what we came here for”.

“This is a process and process is filled with compromises, and it’s also a process where you have to have consensus and that’s what also makes it a very difficult process to manage,” she said.

The delegates also agreed to make operational a green fund aimed at helping poorer countries tackle the effects of climate change. Wealthy nations have previously promised to mobilise up to $100bn a year by 2020 to help developing countries tackle climate change, much of which is intended go through the fund. Details of how it will be funded and managed still have to be worked out.

Officials from US, which has often been accused of blocking efforts to tackle climate change, said they were comfortable with the deal.

“In the end, it ended up quite well,” said Todd Stern, US envoy. “We got the kind of symmetry that we had been focused on since the beginning of the Obama administration. This had all the elements that we were looking for.”

Additional reporting by Kathrin Hille in Beijing