Cancun, Mexico:
Delegates to the United Nations climate change conference here approved a package of measures early Saturday morning aimed at slowing the emissions of climate-altering gases and at helping the poorest nations adapt to global warming.
Although the steps were fairly modest and do not require the broad changes that scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous climate change, the result was a major step forward for a process that has stumbled badly in recent years. (
Read: The UN climate deal)
The package gives the nearly 200 countries participating in the conference another year to decide whether to extend the frayed Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that requires most wealthy nations to trim their emissions while providing assistance to developing countries to pursue a cleaner energy future.
"This is a new era of international cooperation on climate change," said Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign minister and chair of the two-week talks.
The agreement sets up a new fund to help poor countries adapt to climate impacts, creates new mechanisms for transfer of technology, provides compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and strengthens the emissions reductions pledges that came out of the last United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen last year.
The conference approved the package over the objections of Bolivia and a handful of other nations that said it did not require enough of the wealthiest countries. But their protests did not stand in the way of acceptance of the package, the product of a year of work and two weeks of intensive negotiations.
In all, the success of the talks was a breath of life for a process that many had declared too cumbersome and contentious to achieve meaningful progress.
"This agreement was a remarkable turnaround for a multilateral approach to address climate change, including commitments on emissions from all the world's major economies," said Jennifer Morgan, head of climate and energy programs at the World Resources Institute. But she said the nations left many issues unresolved, including whether to seek to enshrine the goals into a legally-binding agreement and the sources of the $100 billion in annual climate-related aid that the wealthy nations have promised to provide.
Earlier in the evening, Todd Stern, the American climate envoy, endorsed the deal, calling it a balanced package that lays the groundwork for future progress. "So let's get this deal done and put the world on a path for a low-emissions and more sustainable future," he said.
China and the United States, the world's largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, appeared to have agreed Friday night on a formula for ensuring that all nations were adhering to their pledges to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. The accord sets standards for reporting actions each country is taking to cut its emissions, with requirements for detailed statements of data, economic assumptions and methodology. That seemed to satisfy American concerns that countries could manipulate the emissions and economic data they submitted for international review.
As technical experts worked on details and diplomatic language before the package was finalized early Saturday morning, many of the participants were asking broader questions about the future of the talks, which have yet to produce an effective and binding agreement.
"Climate change is a long-term problem that won't be addressed in one meeting or one agreement," said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University and a longtime observer of the United Nations process. "Countries are already taking actions on their own and moving toward international cooperation on these issues. That may be a more productive course than a single, stand-alone, top-down agreement."
The climate itself was not waiting for the outcome of the talks. An analysis of average global temperatures released Friday by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies shows that 2010 has so far been the warmest year in its 130-year climate record. The record-breaking temperatures appeared due to a combination of man-made climate change and a natural warming pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean earlier this year caused by El Niño, according to Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
The year was marked by extreme weather events, from a record-breaking heat wave in Russia in July to the dramatic floods in Pakistan. High sea temperatures were also blamed for a global bleaching of coral reefs.
A cold snap under way in Britain and northern Europe was unusual, but would do little to alter global average temperatures for the year, said James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute. "This regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended," Dr. Hansen said. "That is hardly the case."