Countries back global warming deal

More than 190 countries have struck an agreement at the latest round of UN climate talks that puts efforts to secure a new international deal to tackle global warming back on track.

The talks in Cancun, Mexico, were the latest attempt to make progress towards a new global deal on tackling climate change, after last year’s meeting in Copenhagen failed amid chaotic scenes to secure a new legally-binding treaty on cutting emissions, instead delivering only a weak voluntary accord.

At the end of two weeks of talks in Mexico, government ministers and officials agreed a deal which Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne described as a “serious package” of measures.

He acknowledged the agreement did not give everybody everything they wanted and would still require work towards a final deal at a meeting next year in Durban, South Africa.

Environmental campaigners said it threw a lifeline to efforts to get a deal to tackle climate change but there was still much work to do, in particular to close the “gigatonne gap” between the greenhouse emissions cuts countries have pledged and the reductions needed to limit temperature rises to no more than 2C.

The agreement acknowledges the need to keep temperature rises to 2C and brings non-binding emissions cuts pledges made under the voluntary Copenhagen Accord, hammered out in the dying hours of last year’s conference, into the UN process.

It also includes an agreement to set up a green climate fund as part of efforts to deliver 100 billion US dollars (£60 billion) a year by 2020 to poor countries to help them cope with the impacts of global warming and develop without polluting.

It includes a scheme to provide financial support for countries to preserve their forests, in a bid to combat deforestation which accounts for almost a fifth of global annual emissions, and makes progress on how countries’ actions are going to be monitored and verified..

Earlier progress had been held up by the major stumbling block of what is to be done about the existing climate treaty, Kyoto protocol, and how major emitters such as the US and China should be included in a future deal.

But in scenes in the final hours that were in sharp contrast to last year’s angry debates between countries in Copenhagen, the Mexican president of the conference Patricia Espinosa received two standing ovations in the meeting for her work to achieve agreement, with the Indian delegation describing her as a goddess.