U.N. Conference Adopts Global Warming Pact

Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post
Saturday December 15, 2007

The United States, under a barrage of criticism from developing countries, agreed today to accept a framework for future climate change talks that would compel industrialized countries to provide measurable technological and financial aid to lesser-off nations if they take verifiable steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The compromise, forged mid-day Saturday after a series of around-the-clock negotiations involving 187 nations, bridged the differences between Bush administration officials' insistence that rapidly industrializing nations do their part to address global warming and the developing world's call for greater climate action by Washington.

Under the deal, which will provide the framework for negotiating a new global warming treaty over the next two years, developed nations must take binding "commitments or actions" to cut their emissions, and poorer nations must also seek to reduce their contributions to human-induced climate change.

"This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change," said Indonesian Environment Minister and President of the conference, Rachmat Witoelar. "Parties have recognized the urgency of action on climate change and have now provided the political response to what scientists have been telling us is needed."

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But the agreement only came together after the talks nearly collapsed Saturday afternoon when Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky told the delegates that the United States was "not willing to accept" language calling on industrialized nations to produce "measurable, reportable and verifiable" assistance to developing countries.

Those comments sparked a round of boos and hisses from the audience -- a rare event in the context of a U.N. negotiation -- and a sharp rebuke from an array of developing countries.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa's minister of environmental affairs and tourism, called Dobriansky's comments "unwelcome" and questioned why the United States was not doing more to address global warming when leaders from emerging economies had agreed to taking measurable and verifiable steps to reduce their emissions.

Full article here.

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