Durban durbar churns some hope

Durban has seen some success. Negotiators will start work on a new climate deal that would have legal force and, crucially, require both developed and developing countries to cut their carbon emissions. The terms now need to be agreed by 2015 and come into effect from 2020.

Developing countries, including China, the world's biggest emitter, have agreed to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases. Previously, poorer nations have insisted that they should not bear any legal obligations for tackling climate change, whereas rich nations should.

Durban saw nations agreeing that what has been done is not enough. The Durban agreement explicitly refers to the "emissions gap" – the difference between the aggregate impact of commitments that countries have made, and the upper limit of emissions required to have a chance of meeting the globally agreed goal of no more than two degrees of global warming. That gap is large, and countries have now agreed that their targets will need to be strengthened to try to close it.

At the heart of the Durban deal is the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the legally binding treaty signed in 1997. It has also set up a roadmap towards a new treaty to succeed Kyoto in 2020, which for the first time will require the big emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil, to make legally binding commitments too.

However, the deal did little to address the scale of emissions cuts needed, and environmental groups felt this was a huge failing.