All nations, including the United States, have agreed to move forward and negotiate a global climate agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. That’s the outcome forged at the last gasp at the UN climate convention meeting in Bali on Saturday.

The deal, the so-called “roadmap”, sets a timetable for negotiations to complete a full post-2012 agreement by the end of 2009 with talks to start in March or April 2008.

“We now have a Bali roadmap, we have an agenda and we have a deadline,” said Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s Environment Minister and chairman of the conference. “But we also have a huge task ahead of us and time to reach agreement is extremely short, so we need to move quickly.”

The two crucial steps that broke the impasse were concessions by the EU and the US, at loggerheads for years now over commitment to binding targets to cut emissions. Late last week, the EU agreed to drop the reference to specific targets in the roadmap steadfastly opposed by the US. The US was supported in its opposition to specific targets by Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, basically all of rich nations outside Europe facing current emissions targets under Kyoto.

Then on Saturday, the US backed down in the face of loud boos from a number of countries and accepted demands by the G77 developing nation bloc that the industrialised countries commit to help them out in the emission reduction challenge. The US’s stated opposition to accepting any targets has been based on the fact that major developing world emitters haven’t been given similar obligations.

Already Washington has expressed “serious concerns” over the Bali outcome saying that the final agreement in two years must see developing nations commit to their share of the required cuts in emissions. Under the agreement, developing countries accept obligations only to make their greenhouse gas emissions and actions to reduce them "measurable, reportable and verifiable", and they must “consider” taking such reduction action.

The widely-respected Pew Center on Global Climate Change has described the Bali agreement as “a critical step toward an effective global response to climate change” despite its failure to spell out the size or the nature of the actions needed in a final accord. The roadmap does contains a commitment to negotiate “deep cuts in global emissions”. It is a major step forward to have the US on board with such a pledge.

Only now in a footnote to the preamble of the roadmap is there any mention of the 25 to 40 per cent targets by 2020 in developed countries. This target range, supported by the EU, was identified in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report earlier this year as the level of cuts needed in developed nations if global warming is to be restricted to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is seen as the limit before dangerous climate change sets in.

The Bali conference also agreed steps in specific areas over the two-week talks:

Deforestation
The conference agreed to take up the Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) programme to deliver a new mechanism for paying local communities in developing countries to preserve their forest. This would be a key part of the final post-2012 climate agreement to staunch the enormous emissions from logging and burning tropical rainforest – around 20 per cent of total worldwide emissions each year. Carbon credits would be generated for tree left in the ground on the basis of their carbon storage value.

Initial work will be done by the UNFCCC scientific and technical body to study how best to measure current deforestation rates and carbon storage levels in forests, and how to verify emission savings from preservation efforts. It must report back at next year’s annual meeting.
UNFCCC decision paper [PDF 100 KB]

Adaptation
The Bali meeting agreed to kick off a new fund to pay for measures in developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The UN’s Global Environment Facility and the World Bank will administer the fund to be bankrolled with a 2 per cent levy on carbon credits generated projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
UNFCCC decision paper [PDF 115 KB]


Clean technology transfer
It was recognised that the transfer of clean and low emissions technologies from the industrialised world to the developing world must be “scaled up” to contain its emissions growth. The UNFCCC technical and scientific bodies will consider the best ways, including financial mechanisms.
UNFCCC decision paper [PDF 150 KB]


Carbon capture and storage (CCS)
The conference agreed to further investigate CCS for possible inclusion in the CDM from 2013, the UNFCCC will conduct a technical study and report back at next year’s meeting.


Analysis:
Bali: Breakthrough or breakdown?