UN climate talks end with bare minimum agreement

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – UN climate talks ended  with a bare-minimum agreement yesterday when delegates  “noted” an accord struck by the United States, China and other  emerging powers that falls far short of the conference’s  original goals.

“Finally we sealed a deal,” UN Secretary-General Ban  Ki-moon said. “The ‘Copenhagen Accord’ may not be everything  everyone had hoped for, but this … is an important  beginning.”

A long road lies ahead. The accord — weaker than a legally  binding treaty and weaker even than the ‘political’ deal many  had foreseen — left much to the imagination.

It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2  degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times — seen as a  threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts,  mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how  this would be achieved.

It held out the prospect of $100 billion in annual aid from  2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where  this money would come from. And it pushed decisions on core  issues such as emissions cuts into the future.

“This basically is a letter of intent … the ingredients  of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge  of climate change, but not in precise legal terms. That means  we have a lot of work to do on the long road to Mexico,” said  Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat.

Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November  2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what  they failed to achieve in Copenhagen — a new treaty to replace  the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees.

Non-binding accord

A plenary session of the marathon 193-nation talks in the  Danish capital merely “took note” of the new accord, a  non-binding deal for combating global warming finalised by U.S.  President Barack Obama, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Work on the pact had begun in a meeting of 28 leaders,  ministers and officials, including EU countries and small  island nations most vulnerable to climate change.

The European Union, which has set itself ambitious  emissions cuts targets and encouraged others to follow suit,  only reluctantly accepted the weak deal that finally emerged.

“The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done  one step, we have hoped for several more,” said German  Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the final hours of the talks, which began on Dec. 7 and  ended early yesterday afternoon, delegates agreed to set a  deadline to conclude a UN treaty by the end of 2010.

At stake was a deal to fight global warming and promote a  cleaner world economy less dependent on fossil fuels.

The accord explicitly recognised a “scientific view” that  the world should limit warming to no more than 2 degrees  Celsius — although the promised emissions cuts were far short  of the amount needed to reach that goal.

“We have a big job ahead to avoid climate change through  effective emissions reduction targets, and this was not done  here,” said Brazil’s climate change ambassador, Sergio Serra.

A final breakthrough came after US President Barack Obama  brokered a final deal with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and  leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil that they stand  behind their commitments to curb growth in greenhouse gases.

Obama said the “extremely difficult and complex” talks laid  the foundation for international action in the years to come.

“For the first time in history, all of the world’s major  economies have come together to accept their responsibility to  take action on the threat of climate change,” Obama said at the  White House on Saturday after returning from Copenhagen.

The outcome underscored shortcomings in the chaotic U.N.  process and may pass the initiative in forming world climate  policy to the United States and China, the world’s top two  emitters of greenhouse gases.
Stormy

In a stormy overnight session, the talks came to the brink  of collapse after Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia  lined up to denounce the US and China-led plan, after heads  of state and government had flown home.

Sources close to the talks told Reuters the Danish hosts  and UN lawyers had not obtained formal backing from the  conference for a smaller group of leaders and ministers to  agree a final text, leading to chaos when this was finally  presented to a plenary meeting of all 193 countries.

UN talks are meant to be concluded by unanimity. Under a  compromise to avoid collapse, the deal listed the countries  that were in favour of the deal and those against.

An all-night plenary session, chaired by Danish Prime  Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, hit a low point when a Sudanese  delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust.

The document “is a solution based on the same very values,  in our opinion, that channelled six million people in Europe  into furnaces,” said Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping.

“The reference to the Holocaust is, in this context,  absolutely despicable,” said Anders Turesson, chief negotiator  of Sweden.    The conference finally merely “took note” of the new  accord.

This gives it the same legal status as if it had been  accepted, senior United Nations official Robert Orr said. But  it is far from a full endorsement, and it was also condemned by  many environmental groups as showing a failure of leadership.