New U.N. climate deal struck, critics say gains modest

DURBAN, (Reuters) – Climate negotiators agreed  a pact today 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.
But 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  today, 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  nations.
“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 U.N. 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 U.N. 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 U.S.,  India and China into a roadmap which will secure an overarching  global deal,” he said.
U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said Washington was satisfied  with the outcome: “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.”
Yet U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres acknowledged the  final wording on the legal form a future deal was ambiguous:  “What that means has yet to be decided.”
A U.N. spokesman said the final texts might not all be  publicly available for some days.
Environmentalists said governments wasted valuable time by  focusing on a handful of specific words in the negotiating text,  and failed to raise emissions cuts to a level high enough to  reduce global warming.
Today’s deal follows years of failed attempts to impose  legally-binding, international cuts on emerging giants, such as  China and India, as well as rich nations like the United States.
The developed world had already accepted formal targets  under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the  end of next year, although Washington never ratified its  commitment.
Today’s deal extends Kyoto until the end of 2017, ensuring  there is no gap between commitment periods, but EU delegates  said lawyers would have to reconcile those dates with existing  EU legislation.

LEAST-BAD OPTION
India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who gave an  impassioned speech to the conference denouncing what she said  was unfair pressure on Delhi to compromise, said her country had  only reluctantly agreed to the accord.
“We’ve had very intense discussions. We were not happy with  reopening the text but in the spirit of flexibility and  accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility… we  agree to adopt it,” she said.
Small island states in the frontline of climate change, said  they had gone along with a deal but only because a collapse of  the talks was of no help to their vulnerable nations.
“I would have wanted to get more, but at least we have  something to work with. All is not lost yet,” said Selwin Hart,  chief negotiator on finance for the coalition of small states.
Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, head of the Africa Group, added: “It’s a  middle ground, we meet mid-way. Of course we are not completely  happy about the outcome, it lacks balance, but we believe it is  starting to go into the right direction.”
U.N. reports released in the last month warned delays on a  global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions will make it  harder to keep the average rise to within 2 degrees Celsius over  the next century.
“It’s certainly not the deal the planet needs — such a deal  would have delivered much greater ambition on both emissions  reductions and finance,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of  Concerned Scientists.
“Producing a new treaty by 2015 that is both ambitious and  fair will take a mix tough bargaining and a more collaborative  spirit than we saw in the Durban conference centre these past  two weeks.”