'First steps' climate deal branded toothless by campaigners

World leaders emerged with a climate agreement last night which they claimed was a “first step” in tackling global warming – but which campaigners criticised as “a toothless declaration” which would fail to avert catastrophe.

After hours of tortuous negotiations in Copenhagen, the US announced that President Barack Obama had come to a “meaningful agreement” with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as well as with India and South Africa.

White House officials said the deal was an “important first step” although “not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change”.

It said they had agreed to “listing their national actions and commitments, a finance mechanism, to set a mitigation target of two degrees Celsius and to provide information on the implementation of their actions through national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines”.

The deal, which has yet to be agreed by all of the more than 190 countries gathered for the crunch UN talks in Copenhagen over the past fortnight, includes references to keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C and provisions for finance to help poor countries fight global warming.

But it has no long-term global targets for emissions cuts or a timetable to turn the agreement into a legally-binding treaty.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the agreement was “a vital first step” but accepted that a lot more work was required to turn it into the legal treaty he had originally wanted to secure at the summit.

He said: “This is the first step we are taking towards a green and low carbon future for the world, steps we are taking together. First steps are difficult, but they are also necessary.”

He said China opposed turning the proposals into a treaty “for the wrong reasons: clinging to their version of what they think international organisations should not do”.

But he attempted to brush off suggestions that his intense efforts to lead the case for a deal had ended in failure – insisting it was significant that all countries now backed the 2C target for the first time.

Speaking after details of the agreement began to emerge, Mr Obama said countries would be putting “concrete commitments” into an appendix of the document, setting out the actions they would take to cut their emissions.

Mr Brown said each country’s targets would be published “in the next few weeks” and expressed confidence that they would be ambitious enough for Europe to increase its proposed cuts from 20% on 1990 levels to 30% and to put the world on track to hit the reductions which experts believe are necessary.

But conservation charity WWF said the EU should have moved unilaterally to the higher figure to help reach a deal, instead of making it conditional on ambitious offers from others.

And Friends of the Earth executive director Andy Atkins said: “This toothless declaration by four countries that the US is spinning as a success is exactly the opposite – as it stands it condemns millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates.

“A 2C rise in temperature would still mean the deaths of millions of people and the complete destruction of at least four low-lying island states.

“And asking countries to list their national actions on climate change is absolutely no substitute for a legally binding international agreement.”

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty.

“It seems there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest, let alone caring much for the millions of people who are facing down the threat of climate change.”