Durban Climate Change Conference 2011

China, India and Brazil are relieved that they retain their carbon-emitting privileges

December 11 marked the conclusion of the two-week-long negotiations convened by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to reach binding targets on cutting carbon emissions to mitigate climate change. The meet was declared a resounding success due to a last-minute breakthrough by negotiators, though what it did was pave the way for more deferred deadlines and deferred negotiations: developing and developed countries would work on a new agreement that would be legally binding on all 194 countries, which would be written by 2015 and come into force after 2020.

While emerging economies like China, India and Brazil heave a sigh of relief at being allowed to retain their carbon-emitting privileges, as the Kyoto Protocol promised in 1997, environmental groups warned that stronger, more urgent action and more decisive emission goals would be required to avoid warming the planet by more than 2°C. Some pointed out that thanks to “climate change renegades” like the US and Canada (which has now joined the former in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, to avoid coughing up a $13.6 billion penalty for failing to meet targets), the climate agenda was determinedly unambitious. They said that what it did accomplish, with global emissions peaking in the next five years, was to set us on course for an estimated—and disastrous—average 4°C increase from pre-industrial times by the end of the century.

Despite such declarations of a hastening apocalypse, the meet produced one dazzling green carrot: a $100 billion Green Climate Fund to help poorer countries with projects to help cut down on emissions. But much remains to be done, and campaigners and small island states under siege say it can’t wait for another high profile meet to take place.

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