Durban to deliver on climate pact

A NEW treaty covering all of the world's major carbon dioxide emitters will be negotiated following a tumultuous summit in Durban.

A NEW treaty covering all of the world's major carbon dioxide emitters, including the US, China and India, will be negotiated following a tumultuous marathon session at the UN climate change summit in Durban yesterday.

The agreement came after developing nations joined with the European Union to isolate China and India, and set in train talks for a new global treaty.

The negotiations will start immediately and are expected to conclude by 2015. The new arrangements will take effect from 2020.

The hard-fought deal to bring all greenhouse gas emitters into a single, legal agreement is the centrepiece of a package of linked outcomes achieved at Durban.

They include a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol for developed nations, the establishment of the framework for a $100 billion-a-year green development fund, and progress on measures to help preserve the rainforests of the Amazon Basin and Indonesia.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, who represented Australia at the Durban talks, said the outcome was a spectacular result.

"We now have a mandate to negotiate an agreement with legal effect on every major emitter," Mr Combet said. But critics of the Gillard government's carbon tax package seized on the Durban outcome, claiming Australia's carbon tax was in front of the world on climate change action, and arguing that the lack of a binding global agreement undermined Treasury modelling of the effects of the package.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the Durban outcome was "even worse" than most had expected and would have significant implications for Australian households, given that the carbon tax was modelled on the major economies, including the US, being part of an international agreement by 2016.

Minerals Council of Australia acting chief executive Brendan Pearson said it was a case of "delay the deadline", and by acting early to introduce "the world's biggest carbon tax, Australia risks being taken for a very expensive ride".

Peter Anderson, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the Durban decision confirmed that Australia was the frontrunner on bringing in a carbon tax.

"Countries around the world failed to take reciprocal action to Australia's, and as a result we are now looking at at least seven years of eroded competitiveness for our industries," Mr Anderson said.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said anything less than an agreement including all major greenhouse gas emitters taking action would not be environmentally effective, and would heighten the risks associated with Australia's approach to reducing greenhouse gases.

But Climate Institute deputy chief executive Erwin Jackson said the outcome from the Durban climate conference represented "real progress, with a step towards a legally binding agreement covering all major emitters, and increased co-operation in financing clean energy and adaptation in the world's poorest nations".

"For the first time, all major greenhouse gas emitters will be negotiating as equal partners towards a legal agreement by 2015," Mr Jackson said.

The World Resources Institute described it as a "major climate deal" that would lead to negotiations on a legally binding agreement covering both developed and developing countries by 2015, covering emissions after 2020.

The EU compared the Durban Platform to the Berlin Mandate from the first Conference Of Parties in 1995, which led to the creation and adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding international agreement to combat climate change.

As part of the wash-up from Durban, Australia will not take on a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol until the new agreement has been finalised.

The Durban conference ran more than 24 hours overtime, with ministers forced to cancel flights and work through the night.

After hours of heated debate, agreement finally came when India and the EU held last-minute discussions on the conference floor at 2.40am to thrash out an acceptable form of words.

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said: "We believe we have now the possibilities to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force with coverage under the convention applicable to all parties."

Just hours earlier, the Durban conference had threatened to collapse into failure over the

EU's demands to include the phrase "legal instrument" into

a new agreement that would cover the major emitters in the world.

The Durban conference exposed deep-seated divisions between the developed and developing world over the speed with which climate change is being tackled.

But it also produced new allegiances as smaller nations deserted their traditional voting blocs and called for much higher levels of ambition.

Many countries remained angry the Durban conference did not take tougher measures on setting targets and immediately providing investment funds for mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries.

The US was heavily criticised for its longstanding failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

"What we are faced with at the moment is not what is said by countries but what is done by countries," China's chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said.

"So far some of the countries have made commitments, but they are not realising their commitments by taking appropriate actions.

"We are developing countries. We need to develop, we need to deal with poverty, we need to care for our environment and deal with climate change.

"We are doing things you are not doing."

In an address to the conference, Indian Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said she was concerned a legally binding document would undermine equity and limit prospects for development.

"The centrepiece of the climate change debate is and has to be equity," she said.

"The equity of burden sharing cannot be shifted.

"This is not about India but is about the entire world. "Does climate change mean you give up equity?"