KEY POINTS:
After tears, jeers and a dramatic eleventh-hour turnaround by the United States, a compromise for a new international climate change agenda was finally struck in Bali yesterday, just as talks appeared close to collapse.
Amid extraordinary and emotional scenes, which at one point saw the American delegation booed at the UN climate change conference, ministers from more 180 countries thrashed out agreement after days of wrangling.
The resulting "Bali roadmap" is a global warming pact that starts a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto protocol.
But the road was extremely rocky. Talks stalled as Paula Dobriansky, head of the US delegation, signalled that America opposed calls from poorer countries for technological and financial help to combat climate change. It seemed any agreement was doomed. Then Papua New Guinea took to the floor and, in a highly charged speech, its delegate challenged the US: "If you're not willing to lead, get out of the way."
Minutes later, in an astonishing reversal, Ms Dobriansky returned to announce, to cheers from the hall: "We will go forward and join the consensus."
The conference had overrun by a day, despite several night-time sessions. As the wrangling continued, and with no palpable signs of progress, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who had already left Bali for East Timor, was forced to return to rescue the deal from disaster.
In a tearful address to delegates, he pleaded: "The hour is late. It's time to make a decision. You have in your hands the ability to deliver to the people of the world a successful outcome to this conference."
The US had objected to two proposals. One was the EU's suggestion to include a specific demand for industrialised nations to cut emissions to 25-40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, which scientists have said are necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. The other was to have no specific commitment from developing nations, including India and China, to make mandatory cuts.
The "conventional dialogue" was a compromise: there is no specific commitment to the 25-40 per cent cut, only a suggestion in a footnote, but the US did not insist on a commitment from the developing nations.
The Bali roadmap is supposed to guide negotiations towards a new treaty at Copenhagen in 2009, to give governments time to ratify it before the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012.
However, there was palpable disappointment with the huge concessions made to get America's agreement, mostly over lack of detail about any key pledges.
Russia, Japan and Canada also had objected to elements of the deal.
Christian Aid said it was "dismayed" by the compromises.
Disappointment was even stronger among the G77 group of developing countries, many of which claim they are already feeling the effects of climate change in rising sea levels, storms and droughts.
"We are very concerned that there is so little progress," Kete Ioane, Environment Minister of the Cook Islands, told the assembly last week. "We are merely asking for survival: nothing more, nothing less."
But there were still hopes that breaking the 10-year deadlock over the 1997 Kyoto Protocol would lead to progress over the next two years.
In addition, most of the 12,000 delegates expect major changes in the US position after next year's presidential election, since most candidates have declared their support for mandatory emissions cuts.
- Observer
