Kyoto Protocol extended to 2020 to fight climate change
World's largest carbon emitter fails to live up to global expectations by not taking lead to rescue struggling climate-change talks in Qatar
Almost 200 nations yesterday extended a weakened UN plan to fight global warming until 2020, averting a new setback to two decades of UN efforts that have failed to halt growing global greenhouse gas emissions.
The eight-year extension of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 keeps it alive as the sole legally binding plan for combating global warming. But the agreement was sapped by the withdrawal of Russia, Japan and Canada, so its signatories now account for only 15 per cent of global emissions.
"I thank you all for good will and hard work in moving the process forward," conference president Abdullah Hamad Al-Attiyah said at the end of marathon talks.
But Moscow's delegate Oleg Shamanov said Russia, along with Belarus and Ukraine, opposed the decision to extend the Kyoto Protocol. Russia wanted less stringent limits on unused carbon emissions permits.
A package of decisions, known as the Doha Climate Gateway, would also postpone until next year a dispute over demands from developing nations for more cash to help them cope with global warming.
All sides say the Doha decisions fell far short of scientists' recommendations for tougher action to avert more floods, droughts and rising sea levels.
Hopes that China - the world's largest carbon emitter and second-largest economy - would take the lead to save the talks this year had quickly faded.