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Durban (South Africa): Kyoto protocol extended by 5 years
Pushing too hard at international climate change talks might have killed the only treaty regulating carbon emissions, host South Africa said after concluding tense negotiations on how the world should respond to global warming.
Given the international financial crisis and competing national political interests, trying to force the countries to do more than they are willing and able to do ”would have resulted in a ‘no deal’ in Durban, not only killing the Kyoto Protocol therefore, but possibly even the UN Convention on climate change itself,” Edna Molewa, South Africa’s environment minister, told reporters on Monday.
South Africa presided for two weeks over the talks, nudging and sometimes pushing longtime rivals to agree.
On Sunday, a day after the talks were ended, negotiators in the coastal city of Durban agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol by five years.
The 1997 agreement has binding emissions targets for some industrial countries but not the world’s biggest carbon polluters, the US and China.
Durban’s accord also envisions a new accord with binding targets for all countries to take effect in 2020.
Some critics have complained that the outcome lacked the ambition.
