A summary of the recent round of UN climate change talks held in Durban, South Africa, written by Thea Ormerod.

"A deal but it misses the mark"

Summary of outcome

After an extra day's hard negotiations at the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nearly 200 countries have signed a deal – to include all countries – to work towards a legal agreement on the climate by 2015. The agreement will come into force from 2020.

COP17 also agreed on Sunday to a second commitment period (2013 – 2017 inclusive) under Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is the only legally binding treaty which sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to slash carbon emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The United States never ratified Kyoto. The US, China, and India did not agree to the second commitment period.

The Green Climate Fund of US$100 billion a year has also been launched, with several developed countries - including the UK and Norway - committing money. Unfortunately there have many pledges to fill the Fund but there are still many unanswered questions over both where the fund would be based and how it would be filled.

Also check out GermanWatch's Climate Change Performance Index to see how countries currently compare.

Positions of countries taken in Durban

During the negotiations, the European Union, the Association of Small Islands Sates, the Least Developed Countries and civil society organisations were lobbying for an ambitious treaty. The United States, Japan, Russia and Canada resisted raising their level of ambition and blocked the process of negotiations.

The US, China, Brazil and (sadly) Australia lobbied for a common legal framework, ie, no treaty, with no process to increase ambition, and weak outcomes on mitigation more generally.

The US even blocked consensus about the Green Climate Fund. Harjeet Singh, ActionAid's Climate Justice Coordinator said: "It is disgraceful that a climate summit, held in Africa delivered so little for Africans. The US should be ashamed that their actions at these negotiations effectively rendered the Green Climate Fund an empty vault."

Positive views of outcome

Evaluations of the agreement vary widely, with UNFCCC head Christiana Figueres describing it as "landmark" and "historic", and saying that Durban has delivered what other countries have so far failed to.

South African Minister of International Relations Maite Nkoana-Mashabane expressed satisfaction at the outcomes reached at COP17. She said that we have "worked together to save tomorrow, today!" She said the talks yielded a roadmap aimed at a legal framework to enforce carbon emission cuts from major greenhouse gas emitters by 2020.

Views of NGOs for climate justice

Civil society organisations take a different view.

Celine Charveriat, Director of Campaigns and Advocacy at Oxfam said: "Negotiators have sent a clear message to the world's hungry: 'Let them eat carbon.' Governments must bank the pennies won here in Durban and immediately turn their attention to raising the ambition of their emissions cuts targets and filling the Green Climate Fund. .... Unless countries ratchet up their emissions cuts urgently, we could still be in store for a ten-year timeout on the action we need to stay below two degrees. The Durban Platform can only be described as a major disappointment."

"Polluters won, people lost," said Greenpeace International's executive director Kumi Naidoo. "Our governments this past two weeks listened to the carbon-intensive polluting corporations instead of listening to the people who want an end to our dependence on fossil fuels and real and immediate action on climate change." Kumi Naidoo criticised the agreement reached at the talks which stipulated that the next deal on climate change matters need only be implemented in 2020. "Right now the global climate regime amounts to nothing more than a voluntary deal that's put off for a decade. This could take us over the two degree threshold where we pass from danger to potential catastrophe."

Friends of the Earth International climate justice co-ordinator Sarah-Jayne Clifton said the resolution of the talks indicated that ordinary people had been let down by their governments. She said "The noise of corporate polluters has drowned out the voices of ordinary people in the ears of our leaders." Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International said "Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions. An increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, Small Island States, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%."

Christian Aid spokesman Mohamed Adow also said the delay in implementation was unacceptable. "Action against climate change in 2020 will come a decade too late for poor people on the frontline - they urgently need it now. Their lives are already ravaged by floods, droughts, failed rains, deadly storms, hunger and disease and we know that these disasters will get worse and more frequent as climate change bites. It is a disastrous, profoundly distressing outcome - the worst I have ever seen from such a process. At a time when scientists are queuing up to warn about terrifying consequences if emissions keep rising, what we have here in Durban is a betrayal of people across the world. "By giving themselves until 2015 to agree a new deal which only takes effect in 2020 governments are delaying desperately needed action and condemning us all to dangerous warming of much more than 2 degrees." Adow said the only "notable achievement" of the Durban talks was the agreement reached that the Green Climate Fund would soon have staff and an office. "But the Fund remains empty and so countries must keep working to identify new sources of the $100 billion a year which they have already agreed must be available to poor countries by 2020, to help them cope with climate change and pursue sustainable development."

Climate Justice Now!, a broad coalition of social movements and civil society, declared the agreement as a "crime against humanity".

Some views from a faith perspective

In the closing days of the negotiations African and international faith leaders urged governments attending the final day of climate change negotiations to do what is right and necessary to keep global temperature from rising no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. "The two degrees Celsius target is unacceptable because temperatures in much of Africa will be far higher," said South African Bishop Geoff Davies.

Oil and coal companies along with other major polluting corporations are engaged in "crimes against humanity and the planet" because they continue to pollute the atmosphere when they have ability to do otherwise, said David Le Page of the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute (SAFCEI).

More than 130 African faith leaders signed a declaration offering specific recommendations based on science, honesty, morality and equity. They called on delegates negotiating a new climate treaty here at COP17 to live up to the African spirit of "ubuntu" – a way of living focused on people's allegiances and relations with each other.

The current economic system encourages "people to get as rich as they can and forget about anyone else," said Bishop Davies. "It's an immoral system." "Historic polluters like the United States have to reduce their emissions dramatically" and their position here is "shocking" and "reprehensible". .... "The children and grandchildren of U.S. congressmen will ask what they were doing to be so selfish and irresponsible."

The U.S is the most religious society in the world but their behaviour is "sinful" in their refusal to reduce emissions that causing so much suffering among people, Bishop Davies said.

"When lifestyles of the wealthy hurt the lives of the poor....and future generations, it is wrong," said Mardi Tindal, Moderator of the United Church of Canada, the country's largest Protestant denomination.

The next Conference of Parties (COP18) will be chaired and hosted by Qatar between November 26 and December 8, 2012.