By Denise Donnebaum and Georg Ismar
dpa
(MCT)

DOHA, Qatar _ The Kyoto Protocol will be extended until 2020, after Qatar pushed through an agreement at the global climate change conference in Doha Saturday, though it will not include any stricter obligations.

Abdullah bin Hamad al-Atiiyah said the new agreement, the only internationally binding treaty on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, would apply starting in 2013.

The two-week-long talks, which were due to end Friday, have been riddled with disagreements among members. They were extended by 24 hours after negotiators from 194 countries failed to reach agreement on most key issues.

On Saturday al-Atiiyah gavelled through the measures before they could be discussed and objections raised, a tactic to which Russia in particular objected.

Most of the delegates applauded his determination to make sure the compromise agreement was saved.

However, the countries which have agreed to the protocol, including all 27 EU members and Australia, only produce around 15 percent of emissions.

The United States never ratified the original 1997 agreement, and other important emitters, Canada, Japan and Russia, have withdrawn from it.

The question of how $100 billion per year in aid for developing countries to tackle climate change would be raised remained unclear. The United States refused to commit to giving more money.

Environmental groups strongly criticized the deal since it will not keep the world within the 2-degrees-Celsius rise widely accepted as manageable.

Climate expert Jan Kowalzig of charity Oxfam said the measures would likely lead to a rise in global temperatures of around 4 degrees and criticized the financial agreements.

“It’s unbelievable that governments at this climate conference have spent most of their efforts not trying to avoid climate change but trying to avoid climate protection,” he said. “That comes at the cost of people in poor countries, whose harvests dry up or are washed away.”

Greenpeace climate expert Martin Kaiser also slammed the compromise agreement. “The ending of the conference in this way is an alarm signal that the whole process needs to be redrawn in order to deliver that which scientists tell us is necessary,” he said.

The agreement was “not impressive but in line with what you could have expected,” said EU Environment Commissioner Connie Hedegaard. “It is a modest and important step in the right direction.”

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