China And India

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The Copenhagen climate summit, roundly dubbed a failure when it ended last year, may actually have sparked significant steps toward curbing global warming, according to some environmentalists and financial analysts. Analyses from groups, including Deutsche Bank, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the liberal Center for American Progress, are challenging the snap indictment of the December conference, which drew wide criticism for failing to produce a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Leaders of the world's largest economies agreed late Friday to an accord on steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a deal hailed by President Obama as an "unprecedented breakthrough" in international negotiations but denounced by critics as too weak to avert the harshest effects of global warming. The agreement is not legally binding. But it would set the first emission limits for emerging powers India and China, along with new reduction targets for the United States, which never adopted the commitments of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Overnight gloom at international climate negotiations here has given way to cautious afternoon optimism, with delegates and observers expressing hope today that world leaders are moving toward clearing several key roadblocks to a new agreement to limit greenhouse gases. Two moves revived the talks, which appeared this morning to be dangerously close to flat-lining. The Obama administration announced that it would join allies in raising $100 billion by 2020 to help the world's poorest countries adapt to climate change, a number that stunned many environmentalists with its size -- and which appears to meet the top demand of China, whose stalemate with the United States had bogged down the negotiations.

The world's poorest and fastest-growing developing nations appear, increasingly, to hold the fate of a new climate agreement in their hands. The choice they face is, deal or no deal? As the Copenhagen climate summit barreled into its penultimate phase Tuesday, wealthy countries ramped up pressure on emerging economies China and India, as well as African and island nations, to compromise and drop near-daily procedural tactics and protests that have slowed the negotiations. Rich nations still hold some bargaining chips, chiefly how much money they're willing to commit to help developing countries adapt to climate change and shift their energy sources over the long term.

As negotiations for a global climate change convention entered their final stages in Copenhagen, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sat down with Times Foreign Editor Bruce Wallace to discuss the prospects for a deal, and whether rich nations are looking to curb the United Nations' role in overseeing the billions of dollars that may be transferred from the developed to the developing world. Ban said he expected to see a final, legally binding agreement signed by the middle of next year.

Negotiations between representatives of the world's largest economies appeared stalled Thursday on a particularly touchy aspect of attacking global warming: how to make sure countries actually do what they pledge to do to combat climate change. The challenge of ensuring that promises come true looms even larger than such issues as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing financial aid for developing countries, diplomats and environmentalists said. "Among the major emitters, this seems to be the biggest issue," said Melinda Kimble, a former U.S. climate negotiator who is a senior vice president at the United Nations Foundation and closely engaged in the talks.

Increasingly optimistic that decisions by China and India will yield a breakthrough in international climate negotiations, President Obama announced Friday that he would take a more active and dramatically timed role at this month's climate summit in Copenhagen. Obama will push back his visit to the conference to its final scheduled day, putting him in a better position to help broker an agreement, the White House announced. The White House also said the United States would pay "its fair share" of a $10-billion-a-year, short-term financing package from wealthy nations to help developing nations adapt to rising temperatures and make the transition to low-emission energy sources.

India found itself under growing pressure this week to set an emission reduction target after China and the United States announced their pledges in advance of a global summit on climate change that opens early next month. The two Asian powerhouses, both of which have eschewed binding targets over concerns about undercutting national development, are seen in some Washington circles as the biggest impediment to an agreement. China and India, as the world's two most populous nations and with rapidly developing economies, have said they will work toward a common position on a climate deal.

China pledged today to increase its efforts to limit "greenhouse" gases, and said that Premier Wen Jiabao would attend the Copenhagen climate summit next month. The announcements came a day after President Obama said he would join the conference and unveiled a provisional target to reduce carbon emissions in the United States. The combination of moves creates a glimmer of optimism that the Dec. 7-18 climate talks will bring nations closer to meaningful agreements on emission cuts -- if not next month, then sometime in the near future.