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After a third sleepless night, climate negotiators in Durban, South Africa finally found a way to reach a compromise early this morning. While the deal doesn't actually set new targets to limit global warming, it creates a financial commitment to help poorer nations produce clean energy. And more significantly, it staves off the collapse of the international process.
NPR's Richard Harris reports from the talks.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: Few people had high expectations for this year's annual round of United Nations climate talks. The main hope was to finalize an agreement reached in principle the year before - that is establishing a major new fund to help funnel billions of dollars from rich nations to poor nations. That will help them adapt to a changing climate and to produce clean energy so they don't contribute so much to climate change themselves. They got that deal.
Europe also agreed to keep the Kyoto Treaty alive for at least five years. But ambitions also grew. And by 1 A.M. this morning, European Union Environment Commissioner Connie Hedegaard expressed the nervous excitement in the room.
CONNIE HEDEGAARD: We are now on the brink of getting more. We are on the brink. It is within our reach to get what the world is waiting for and what only few thought would happen now.
HARRIS: That was an agreement that would chart a course for a legally binding climate pact that would include all the major emitters, including China, the United States and India. That has been a hard-fought battle because up until now, China and India have been treated as developing countries, exempt from reducing their emissions.
India's spokeswoman, Jayanthi Natarajan, took strong exception to the suggestion they would be put on the same legal footing as the rich nations of the world in an as yet undefined agreement.
JAYANTHI NATARAJAN: How do I give blank check, and give a legally binding agreement to sign away the rights of 1.2 billion people and many other people in the developing world?
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NATARAJAN: Is that equity, madam, I ask you? Is that equity?
HARRIS: For a tense hour, it seemed that disagreement over this issue would sink the talks. There was a long series of speeches, going back and forth on this issue. Finally, South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane called a huddle of the major players in a last-gasp effort to find compromise language. That worked.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
HARRIS: The deal was made 14 years to the day that this United Nations group negotiated the Kyoto climate treaty in Japan. And it maintains momentum for series of climate talks that have been divided over issues like the ones India brought up - just how much special dispensation is due to the world's developing nations, some of whom are also major emitters of carbon dioxide.
Jennifer Morgan at the World Resources Institute saw a lot of good in the agreement.
JENNIFER MORGAN: It's mixed. I think it's a major development that all countries have decided to go into a global binding agreement and to negotiate that by 2015.
HARRIS: And she adds that's a major accomplishment for the U.S. government, which has been trying to make that happen for more than 15 years. The downside for her, and many others in the room, is that the pledges between now and 2020 still fall substantially short of what's required to rein in climate change. No doubt, negotiators will come back to exactly that issue when these talks pick up again next year.
Richard Harris, NPR News at the climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
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