Climate change

Agreeing upon a timetable

A deal to negotiate on precisely how to fight climate change is finally struck in Bali

AFTER a fortnight of often tortuous negotiations, and an additional day at the end, 190-odd countries have decided that a global agreement involving all countries is needed to tackle climate change. The “Bali roadmap”, named after the Indonesian island where the deal was struck, is an important milestone. Rich, middle-income and poor countries have acknowledged both the threat of a changing climate and the need for urgent action by all. Substantive negotiations will start within weeks to produce an international convention by the end of 2009 on exactly how countries will meet their “common but differentiated responsibilities” to fight climate change.

Although the roadmap does not state it explicitly, on the insistence of the still somewhat sceptical United States, Canada and Japan, the negotiations will be guided by four scientific reports produced this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These concluded that the planet will probably be in serious trouble—rising temperatures, acidic seas and changing rainfall patterns, among other problems—unless global emissions of greenhouse gases peak within 10 to 15 years and then decline thereafter.

There will be four main pillars to the negotiations. Mitigation, or emissions reduction, will be at the heart of the deal. Developed countries, which are historically responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse-gases, will probably have to cut their emissions by as much as 40% by 2020. Developing countries will be expected to pursue more carbon-friendly development strategies. They will also get special financing from industrialised states to help to adapt to the threats of rising seas, more frequent extreme weather events, falling crop yields and increased migration. Finally, technology will be offered to poorer nations to help them to cut their emissions.

Another important decision was to include in the new regime emissions from deforestation and land degradation. These account for 20 per cent of global emissions and were excluded from current mechanisms to obtain financial rewards from reducing emissions. The aim is for the new deal to be ratified by all countries by the end of 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto protocol expires.

Reaching agreement just to start negotiating might not sound much of an achievement. But it is—even if the roadmap is insufficiently ambitious for most non-governmental organisations. America's George Bush has been reluctant even to discuss climate change, but he has now signed up to talks, if unwillingly. Similarly China, soon to be the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter, was, until this year, an obdurate opponent of negotiating beyond Kyoto. In Bali, Beijing was repeatedly praised for engaging constructively. And Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, received plaudits for ratifying the Kyoto protocol immiediately after taking office on December 3rd.

Various factors have produced the changes of heart. The science of climate change is becoming firmer, more widely accepted and, in some areas, more worrying. In some places the impact of climate change may already be felt. It helps, too, that the new United Nations secretary-genera, Ban Ki-moon, along with firms and campaigners such as Al Gore, have been speaking out more loudly about the threat of climate change.

A sense of urgency was palpable in Bali. But that offered nothing like a guarantee of a deal in 2009. Kyoto took five years to hammer out and that, unlike now, did not involve developing countries signing up to anything. The Bush administration—as was made clear time and again in Bali—also remains opposed to legally binding emission cuts. Most of the leading candidates in the American presidential election are more progressive on climate change, but the new president will not take office until January 2008.