What the talks achieved and why

NEGOTIATORS from 187 countries have agreed to launch talks which, it is hoped, will lead to a new international climate change deal.

Q: So they’ve drawn up a “roadmap” for a deal. Why does the world need it?

A: Scientists from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is “unequivocal”, with negative effects if we don’t take action.

Meanwhile, the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s original global warming deal which committed developed countries to a 5% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, expires in 2012.

So a new agreement is needed.

It’s not going to be easy — the Bali talks were just about agreeing to negotiate a deal, and what the agenda for those negotiations would be.

But it was recognised the Bali roadmap would lay foundations for what will be discussed — and hopefully agreed in 2009.

Q: What’s in it?

A: The so-called Bali Action Plan acknowledges “deep cuts in global emissions” will be required in order to tackle climate change and lays out the need for “a long-term global goal for emission reductions”.

The key decision of the Bali conference is to launch the formal negotiations on achieving a post-2012 deal.

A date of 2009 has been agreed for completing negotiations, with the hope it will be signed at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December that year.

Countries have agreed to look at carbon protection measures, how to help poor countries adapt to the effects of climate change, such as flooding, and how to pass on “green” technology to developing nations. They will also look at how to fund all of these.

Q: What’s missing?

A: The most significant omission from the agreement are figures for emissions cuts the intergovernmental panel warned developed countries will have to make by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change.

The EU had demanded a reference to 25%-40% cuts on 1990 levels and it survived until the last morning, when US opposition to it won out. The mention of the need for emissions to peak within 10 to 15 years and for global emissions to halve by 2050 were also ditched.

Q: Is the deal being viewed as a success?

A: British Environment Secretary Hilary Benn described it as a huge step forward that could not have been possible even a year ago.

The UN’s top climate official Yvo de Boer, who at one point left the debate exhausted and in tears, said: “This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change.”

But environmental and anti-poverty campaign groups have hit out at the perceived weakness of a deal with no mention of targets, claiming it has failed the world’s poor and will make the next two years an uphill struggle to get to a new climate change agreement.

Q: So was it worth it?

A: It’s hard to say. It took 11,000 delegates, observers, campaigners and media, many flying from the other side of the world and racking up their carbon footprint, to achieve a roadmap which some still aren’t happy with.

It is just the first stage in a two-year process.

It will only be when the delegates gather in the Danish capital in 2009 that we will see if world leaders can negotiate an emissions cuts deal that will avert the conditions the scientists warn are waiting for us if we don’t act.

Only then we will know if the Bali roadmap has laid out the path to successful global action — or a road to nowhere.