The global climate talks here were salvaged from the brink of collapse with an overall agreement on Sunday on a roadmap towards an accord that for the first time will bring all major greenhouse-gas emitters under a single legal roof.
Work on a new legal protocol will start on January 1, 2012 and if approved as scheduled by 2015 it will be implemented from 2020.
India managed a major victory by getting the issue of equity back on the negotiating table, something that the European Union had wanted to trash in favour of legally binding agreements.
The key operative words in the Durban declaration are the conference’s willingness to launch “a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force”.
In the third consecutive all-night session, exhausted ministers agreed substantively to protect forests and to establish a global green fund to fight climate change.
But the crucial issue remained on whether the new agreement should have full legal force. The EU was unwilling to bend from its stand that the Kyoto Protocol would be renewed if developing nations committed themselves to make legally binding emissions.
It was at this juncture that a riled Jayanthi Natarajan, India’s minister of state for environment and forests, made an impassioned speech in which she said: “Am I to write a blank cheque and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians without even knowing what the EU ‘roadmap’ contains? I wonder if this is an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible for climate change. I am told that India will be blamed. Please do not hold us hostage.”
The eventual deal was hammered out when the South African head of the COP 17 conference insisted that India and the European Union hold a separate meeting to arrive at a roadmap as suggested by the Brazilian delegation.