“It may be true, as many say: the ultimate goal of a comprehensive and binding climate change agreement may be beyond our reach – for now,” Ban Ki-moon said.

The UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, were supposed to end this past Friday night after nearly two weeks of negotiations. But the talks continued long into Sunday night with the delegates desperately trying to come up with at least some sort of agreement to avoid another COP15-style failure. In the very last hour the delegates managed to agree on a deal. This outcome was largely thanks to three powerful women politicians, one of them being EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard.

And so the 17th climate summit ended with an agreement that at least the EU believes commits all major developing countries such as China, USA and India among others, to accept legally binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately these binding targets won’t come into force until 2020, or even later in worst case. So basically, “the deal saves the talks”, but not the climate.

By waiting till 2020 to enforce cuts in greenhouse gas emissions our leaders have successfully ignored the 2 degrees target, which scientists regard as the final upper limit of safety against irreversible climate chaos, and set us on a path towards an increase of 4 degrees in global temperatures. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said that “delaying real action till 2020 is a crime of global proportions” and that this delay would mean a 4 degrees temperature increase.

“This means the world is on track to a 4C temperature rise, a death sentence for Africa, small island states and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. The richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.”

Greenpeace International director Kumi Naidoo said that “the chance of averting catastrophic climate change is slipping through our hands with every passing year that nations fail to agree on a rescue plan for the planet.”

But not everyone agreed that the Durban deal was a failure. Chris Huhne, the UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, was a bit more optimistic and said that COP17 was a “significant step forward“.

“For the first time ever we have a process within the [UNFCCC] where there are regular reviews of the scientific evidence and seeing where the commitments of countries are. [...] Up to now we have not even had a commitment to [be guided by] the scientific evidence,” he said. “If you talk to the Russians, they will tell you their scientists say there is no global warming.”

Ban Ki-moon welcomed the outcome and said that the deal is “essential for stimulating greater action and for raising the level of ambition and the mobilization of resources to respond to the challenges of climate change.”

“Taken together, these agreements represent an important advance in our work on climate change,” Ban said, calling on countries to “quickly implement these decisions and to continue working together in the constructive spirit evident in Durban.”

We made it. EU’s strategy worked. We got a roadmap that marks a breakthrough for international fight against climate change. Good night.

— Connie Hedegaard (@CHedegaardEU) December 11, 2011

So what’s in the Durban deal? Reuters has a good rundown on what was agreed on this past week during COP17. If you can handle the dry legal language you can find the final texts here. The text talks about a process to “develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force that will be applicable to all Parties to the UN climate convention.” What the terms “legal instrument” and “agreed outcome” really means for a future climate deal is still pretty uncertain. It wouldn’t surprise me if countries will use these unclear terms to delay much-needed action on climate as the UN process develops. The delegates in Durban also made little progress on the much-needed Green Climate Fund.

“The Durban talks made headway on agreeing the design of Green Climate Fund to channel up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations, but achieved little on establishing where the money will come from to fill it”, Reuters writes.

Celine Charveriat, director of campaigns for Oxfam, said that “governments must immediately turn their attention to raising the ambition of their emissions cuts targets and filling the Green Climate Fund.” If countries doesn’t quickly intensify their emissions cuts “we could still be in store for a 10-year timeout on the action we need to stay under two degrees [of temperature increase],” Charveriat said.

So despite the delegates reaching an agreement in the very last hour, and then some, this was another COP failure. But what would you expect from a summit which received minimal media attention and interest from world leaders? Our climate will die while we’re busy saving the banks and a failed economic system.

Big and exciting news are coming today from the UNFCCC climate talks currently being held in Bangkok, Thailand. Norway has announced a commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with 40% by 2020 – based on 1990 levels.

This emission reduction promise from the Norwegian government is now the biggest commitment announced by any industrialized country. It beats the European Union (the now former climate leader) who has so far only promised a 20% reduction by 2020.

Adopt A Negotiator says in a statement that this is “a great day for ambition” in the climate talks and praises Norway for committing to a target that comes very “close to what the science demands”.

“Norway has shown that we can be ambitious in these negotiations. They have decided to break ice today, to avoid their glaciers melting and to avoid seeing more and more devestating climate consequences around the world.”

I think we can thank the people in Norway for this strong climate commitment. If they hadn’t re-elected the country’s centre-left ruling coalition we might have seen a conservative Norway downplaying the severity of climate change instead.

Now we are just waiting for Norway to also take the lead on banning gas cars after 2015.

via Eco-Digital