-Obama struck compromise with emerging powers
-most concede pact short on ambition, NGOs scathing
COPENHAGEN, (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama forged a climate pact with major developing nations including China yesterday but European nations only reluctantly signed up for a deal they criticised as unambitious.
All sides conceded the agreement — the first pact for fighting global warming since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — was imperfect and fell far short of United Nations targets for the Dec. 7-18 talks.
Obama said the deal, which sets a goal of limiting temperature rises to below 2 Celsius and holds out the prospect of an annual $100 billion in aid for developing nations by 2020, was a starting point for world efforts to slow climate change. “This progress did not come easily and we know this progress alone is not enough,” Obama said after talks with China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma which led to the deal.
“We’ve come a long way but we have much further to go,” he said of the deal, meant to prevent more heatwaves, floods, wildfires, mudslides and rising ocean levels.
“The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy,” said Xie Zhenhua, head of China’s climate delegation. “After negotiations both sides have managed to preserve their bottom line.”
The draft agreement still had to win formal approval from a full meeting of all 193 nations at the talks, due later today. “If this makes it through the meeting…then I see it as a modest success,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. “We could have achieved more.”
European nations only fell in line reluctantly with the “Copenhagen Accord” and some developing nations were strongly critical.
MERKEL WANTED MORE
“The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done one step, we have hoped for several more,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She had hoped that all nations would promise deeper cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, during the Copenhagen summit.
A goal mentioned in some draft texts of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, for instance, was dropped.
“I came here to Copenhagen wanting the most ambitious deal possible. We have made a start. I believe that what we need to follow up on quickly is ensuring a legally binding outcome,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
China broke with its allies in the developing nations’ group of 77 and China by strongly embracing the accord.
“This represents the worst development in climate change negotiations in history … Gross violations have been committed today,” said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, who speaks on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.”
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said that Sudan was in the meeting when the deal was drafted.
Obama was unable to offer deeper cuts, partly because carbon capping legislation is stalled in the U.S. Senate. Washington backed a plan to raise $100 billion in aid for poor nations from 2020.
The deal sets an end-January 2010 deadline for all nations to submit plans for curbs on emissions to the United Nations. A separate text proposes an end-2010 deadline for transforming the non-binding pledges into a legally binding treaty.
Some environmental groups were also scathing.
“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport,” said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK.
Negotiators had struggled all day to find a compromise acceptable to all in the unprecedented summit of 120 world leaders.
Tensions between China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters, had been particularly acute after Obama — in a message directed at the Chinese — said any deal to cut emissions would be “empty words on a page” unless it was transparent and accountable.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the deal was backed by all nations at the talks, and had succeeded in binding major carbon emitting countries to curbing their pollution.
“The text we have is not perfect.. If we had no deal, that would mean that 2 countries as important as India and China would be liberated from any type of contract….the United States, which is not in Kyoto would be free of any type of contract. That’s why a contract is absolutely vital.”
