This is no small, fringe deal but includes over 200 countries and the Kyoto agreement is extended to 2020.  It could be easy to criticise this protocol, and many do citing the lack of genuine cuts as opposed to the high ideals.  But the reality is that Kyoto is the only game in town, it is the only vaguely legally binding agreement for reducing emissions and combating global warming.

The latest deal covers both Europe and Australia, although these areas only cause 15% of the world’s emissions. There is an urgent undertaking to update the protocol with a new treaty which bound all nations rich and poor and the expectation that will be implemented by 2015.

There were no strict financial resources allocated through this meeting, there is a suggested figure of 10 billion dollars to be spent every year in order to combat global warming.  There are still rifts within the organisations in the agreement though, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus nearly derailed the agreement by insisting on credits for their previous emissions cuts.  Fortunately the chairman restarted the meeting and swiftly bypassed all the objections by Russia, Poland and the linked states.

The key passage is referred to in the protocol as the Loss and Damage mechanism, it holds the key to bringing all countries on board.  Many envrionmentalists see this as a key watershed and a vital point in the talks.  There is more information on the meeting on the BBC website and the Iplayer application – if  you have trouble viewing the site because of your location then check this out, if you enabled a proxy server based in the UK then you should have full access.  There is also still a clip of the applause when the chair stifled the Russian led revolt – his name is Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah – ironically a former head of the OPEC oil cartel.