G8 SUMMIT:Chancellor Angela Merkel won a partial success in a climate change deal at the G8 summit yesterday with an aspirational agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions by "at least half" by 2050, writes Derek Scallyin Heiligendamm
The agreement commits all G8 members to participating in UN-based climate talks for a successor agreement to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012 and which the US has not ratified.
However, the agreement is a compromise with the US that falls short of Dr Merkel's initial hope of getting the G8 leaders, in particular US president George Bush, to agree to binding emissions reductions.
"If we set global emissions goals, then we will all agree to seriously consider the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050," said Dr Merkel.
A breathless, almost giddy chancellor surprised German journalists by making a surprise appearance at what was supposed to be a background briefing with her advisers - in her hand, the deal done just minutes before. "Considering where we were a few months ago this is a huge success," she said.
"For the first time all those present, including the US, recognise that . . . climate change is by and large human caused, that we need reduction targets, and that they are no longer seen as unrealistic, and that this halving by 2050 is a very important figure," she said.
A particular source of "word wrestling", according to German officials, was the agreement that this document was a contribution to a UN process to find a post-Kyoto deal to be finished in 2009. "This agreement means that the UN will be the site of negotiations for an agreement for the time after the Kyoto agreement in 2012," said Dr Merkel.
Some German officials had feared the US was considering starting a "competing climate event to the UN". German sources said the deal was the work of a "united European front" with Mr Bush.
Dr Merkel began the work during a working lunch with Mr Bush on Wednesday; talks continued during the night and British premier Tony Blair took over at breakfast yesterday. European Commission president José Manuel Barroso followed up and French president Nicolas Sarkozy played a "very important role", the source said. A final text was hammered out after noon and agreed over lunch.
Mr Blair called the agreement a "major step forward" while Mr Sarkozy was more cool saying: "If you want me to say that we could have done better, then, yes."
Environment group Greenpeace said that a deal without firm targets for emission reductions was "clearly not enough to prevent dangerous climate change".
"But we welcome that there is now a serious mandate to start talks on an extension of the Kyoto protocol," said Daniel Mittler, political adviser to Greenpeace International.
Anticipating her critics, Dr Merkel disagreed that she had fallen short of her goal.
"Life is the process of trying to achieve what is possible as well as possible," she said. "And when I consider what I wanted, what has come out, it is the best possible."