Nonbinding Agreement Reached at Copenhagen Climate Summit

An advert depicting US President Barack Obama as part of a campaign with heads of state placed all over Copenhagen Airport by the global coalition tcktcktck.org and Greenpeace calling on world leaders to secure a deal at the summit. Photo by EPA/BGNES

A nonbinding agreement, which has nonetheless been described as “meaningful” by key states, has been reached at the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.

The agreement reached between the USA and four key developing nations – China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, was announced to the conference by US President Barack Obama.

“For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” Obama said as quoted by The New York Times. Obama described the agreement as a “breakthrough” “foundation” for global action and as the first step in the fight against climate change.

The three-page agreement does not commit the industrialized or the developing nations to specific targets for cuts in the greenhouse gas emissions but it provides of system for monitoring and reporting progress towards national goals in that area and calls for wealthy nations to support those countries which are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The agreement does set a goal of limiting the increase of global temperature to up to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the decades before that.

“This progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough,” Obama declared. The agreement does not set a goal for a binding international treaty.

Yet, a new global climate change conference will be held in Mexico City at the end of 2010, with an interim meeting preceding it to take place in Bonn, Germany.

The deal brokered by the US President has been welcomed by the Chinese delegation at the Copenhagen summit whose representatives has said that the meeting brought positive results making everybody happy.

European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and UK PM Gordon Brown have made it clear that they accepted the deal between industrialized and developing nations but that they would like to see more in terms of binding commitments.

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