Modest deal

United Nations members agreed early Sunday to a plan promoted by the European Union to extend the Kyoto Protocol and negotiate requirements for all member countries to reduce their carbon emissions.

"Hearing no objections, it is so decided," South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said as she brought down the gavel to applause ending a long night of talks, marking the second day of overtime.

The announcement came after India, the last country to hold out, gave up its protest to the roadmap, which would see emerging giants held accountable to the same carbon-reduction standards as industrialized nations.

Europe's plan

The European Union-led plan will give new life to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which has been highly touted by developing nations but increasingly dismissed by rich nations for not holding poorer countries accountable to the same standards.

Until now only industrial countries had legally binding emissions targets under the Kyoto Treaty, which expires in 2012. The European Union has vowed to sign on for a second Kyoto round, lasting another five years, but Canada, Japan and Russia said new promises would not make sense as long as bigger polluters have no legal constraints.

Sunday's deal, which has been dubbed the Durban Platform, calls for a 2015 pact that for the first time will hold all major carbon polluters legally responsible for cutting the greenhouse gasses believed to cause global warming. That pact would be implemented in 2020.

The deal also sets up bodies to collect, govern and distribute tens of billions of euros a year for poor countries. Where the money will come from is not specified in the deal. Other documents in the package lay out rules for monitoring and verifying emissions reductions, protecting forests and transferring clean technologies to developing countries.

Long struggle

The agreement, which came after a second long night of overtime talks, ended fears that the Durban talks could collapse as did the 2009 climate change talks in Copenhagen.

As midnight struck, developing and industrial nations had yet to come together on a new protocol.

Nkoana-Mashabane pleaded with delegations to accept the four separate texts on the table, which she said represented an imperfect, yet good outcome to nearly two weeks of stormy debates.

"I think we all realize they are not perfect," she told the conference. "But we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good and the possible."

The United States, India and China had initially baulked at the EU's move to negotiate a treaty that would put them under legal obligations. The US delegation suggested it would be hard to persuade congressional conservatives in Washington, while the two emerging economic giants did not want to take on commitments that could hamper their growth.

Many developing countries had complained that the language of the agreement was not legally binding.

"Loophole for the USA"

Still, after weeks of being accused of obstructionism and delay, US climate envoy Todd Stern voiced his approval of the texts.

"This is a very significant package. None of us likes everything in it. Believe me, there is plenty the United States is not thrilled about," Stern said, adding that rejecting the package would undo valuable advances.

A collapse in talks Sunday would have left the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012, without a successor treaty in place.

In contrast with the optimism shown by some participants at the talks, the environmental organization Greenpeace has expressed disappointment at the outcome.

Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace climate campaigner from Germany, said the decision taken at the conference had "created a loophole at the last minute for the USA and fossil-energy corporations with the help of India."

He said the result meant there was a risk of a new process of long-drawn-out negotiations.

Important foundation, feeble pledges

The climate expert from the German branch of the charity Oxfam, Jan Kowalzig, was slightly more upbeat in his assessment.

"The decision to have a second round of commitments for the Kyoto Protocol and the negotiation mandate for a further agreement form an important foundation for future global climate-protection architecture," Kowalzig said.

However, he said the "feeble pledges" made by industrial countries meant that "the world is moving toward a temperature rise of 4 degrees or more" and that a maximum of 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) warming was "only just achievable."

In this respect, Kowalzig said, the outcome at Durban was "extremely disappointing, mainly because of the intransigence of the USA."

UN reports released last month warned that delays on a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions will make it harder to keep the average temperature rise to within 2 degrees Celsius over the next century.

Author: David Levitz (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Editor: Sean Sinico