[] [BTBBT Daily - 12/12]Durban talks agree new climate change course

--> A UNITED Nations climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement yesterday on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change.

The 194-party conference in Durban agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would ensure countries will be legally bound to carry out any pledges they make. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest.

The deal doesn't explicitly compel any nation to take on emissions targets, although most emerging economies have volunteered to curb emissions growth.

Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but will be extended for at least another five years under the new accord - a key demand by developing countries seeking to preserve the only existing treaty regulating carbon emissions.

The proposed Durban Platform offered answers to problems that have bedeviled global warming negotiations for years about sharing responsibility for controlling emissions and helping the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations cope with the changing forces of nature.

The United States was a reluctant supporter, concerned about joining an international climate system that would find opposition in Congress.

Yesterday's deal also set up the bodies that will collect, govern and distribute tens of billions of dollars a year for poor countries. Other documents in the package lay out rules for monitoring and verifying emissions reductions, protecting forests, transferring clean technologies to developing countries and scores of technical issues.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the deal represented "an important advance in our work on climate change."

Environmentalists criticized the package for failing to address what they called the most urgent issue, to move faster and deeper in cutting carbon emissions.

Scientists say that unless those emissions - chiefly carbon dioxide from power generation and industry - level out and reverse within a few years, the Earth will be set on a possibly irreversible path of rising temperatures.

Yesterday's breakthrough capped 13 days of hectic negotiations that ran a day and a half over schedule, including two round-the-clock days that left negotiators bleary-eyed. Delegates were seen nodding off in the final plenary session.

The nearly fatal issue involved the legal nature of the accord that will govern carbon emissions by the turn of the next decade.

A plan put forward by the European Union sought strong language that would bind all countries equally to carry out emissions commitments.

India led the objectors, saying it wanted a less rigorous option. Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan argued that the EU proposal undermined the 20-year-old principle that developing countries have less responsibility than industrial nations that caused global warming through 200 years of pollution.

China's head delegate Xie Zhenhua supported India, saying industrial nations had not lived up to their promises while China and other developing countries had launched ambitious green programs.

"We are doing whatever we should do. We are doing things you are not doing. What qualifies you to say things like this?" he said, raising his voice and waving his arm.

As the debate grew increasingly tense, conference president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa's foreign minister, called a recess and told the EU and Indian delegates to put their heads together.

Coming after weeks of unsuccessful efforts to resolve the issue, Nkoana-Mashabane gave Natarajan and European Commissioner Connie Hedegaard 10 minutes to find a solution. They needed 50.

The package gave new life to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

A separate document obliges major developing nations like China and India, excluded under Kyoto, to accept legally binding targets.

The European Union, the primary bloc falling under the Kyoto Protocol's reduction commitments, said an extension of its targets was conditional on major developing countries also accepting limits with the same legal accountability.

Extension of the Kyoto Protocol

Yesterday's deal extends Kyoto, whose first phase of emissions cuts run from 2008 to the end of 2012. The second commitment period will run from January 1, 2013, until the end of 2017. There was agreement on extending Kyoto for five years, but lawyers will have to work out how to align this with EU legislation.

Legal form

Delegates agreed to start negotiations for a new legally binding treaty to be decided by 2015 and come into force by 2020. The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action would "develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force that will be applicable to all parties to the UN climate convention."

Ambition

Delegates decided the process towards developing a new legal instrument would "raise levels of ambition" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the request of the EU and the Alliance of Small Island States, delegates agreed on a work plan to identify options for closing the "ambition gap" between countries' current emissions pledges for 2020 and the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Finance

The talks made headway on agreeing the design of a Green Climate Fund to channel up to US$100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations, but achieved little on establishing where the money will come from. A proposal last week to generate cash from charging international shipping for the carbon emissions it generates faced such opposition it did not survive in the final text.

Carbon capture and storage

The talks ended six years of debate over whether and how the technology of carbon capture and storage could qualify for carbon credits.

The Kyoto scheme rewards governments or companies which invest in clean energy projects in developing countries with carbon credits to trade or sell. The new rules force developers to put five percent of credits in a reserve, to be awarded only after it is proved no carbon dioxide has leaked 20 years after the end of the crediting period.