Reporting from the UN climate change summit in Bali

With a climate deal finally agreed following a real risk of failure, ActionAid campaigner Tom Sharman, speaking from Bali, says that all countries must now work hard through the UN process over the next two years to reach a post 2012 agreement.

The world's poorest people are being hit first and worst by climate change. Their situation will only get worse without a comprehensive international agreement comprising deeper carbon cuts from rich countries and a massive injection of cash to enable poor countries to adapt to the degree of climate change that is now inevitable.

New and additional finance must be found to close the multi-billion dollar gap between what is needed and what is currently available to fund adaptation in poor countries.

The figures
The 100 countries most vulnerable to climate change are the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and Africa.

Countries such as Bangladesh, Fiji and Malawi are collectively responsible for only 3.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

This compares with 4.5% for India, 15.3% for China, 23.3% for the US and 24.7% for the EU.

As this goes to press there is still no final agreement here in Bali.

Negotiations are expected to continue into the early hours of Saturday morning (Bali is 8 hours ahead of GMT).

There are now just two possible scenarios.

Either there is an agreement which responds to the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and sets a target for rich countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40% by 2020.

Or the US will have succeeded in overriding the view of their own scientists who agreed on this so-called ‘mitigation range’ when they met in Spain just four weeks ago.

Most governments, NGOs and climate change campaigners would consider the first outcome a decent beginning on the road to a new international agreement.

Yet while the second scenario is clearly preferable to outright failure it will leave the global community with an awful lot of work to do over the next two years.

With the talks deadlocked, the key to unblocking them will be the international coalition mobilised against the US in the next few hours.

The EU is trying to work with China and the G77 group of 130 developing countries to isolate the US, who fear being fingered as the country that blocked a deal the rest of the world wanted.

But many of the 100 countries most affected by climate change are already feeling sidelined by the rich world stand-off on mitigation.

Tuvalu’s chief negotiator, Enele Sosene Sopoaga , said, “We know there are tactics to silence the most vulnerable countries”, and added that the “survival and security of small island and low-lying states must be the benchmark” for success in Bali.

While Least-Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States, and Africa comprise 100 countries with a combined population of more than one billion, they are collectively responsible for only 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 5% for India, 15% for China, 23% for the US and 25% for the EU.

With little carbon to cut they are demanding a comprehensive climate package from the rest of the world – emissions reductions to prevent further dangerous climate change balanced equally with money and technology to adapt to the degree of climate change that cannot now be prevented

So with just hours to go before a ‘roadmap’ deal must be agreed, post-Bali talks will have to focus on their needs, rather than the concerns of the US and EU, if we are to deliver climate justice for all in the years to come.

With the clock counting down to deadline-day UN climate chief, Yvo do Boer, warned that “the whole house of cards” was at risk of “falling to pieces”

Tom Sharman, ActionAid's man in Bali for the UN's World Climate Talks, reports on spin, PR, and some serious negotiations.

Ministers, joined in Bali today by Nobel prize winner Al Gore, are dividing their time between serious negotiations and carefully crafted PR.

The prize for best spinners at the moment has to go to the Americans with their press conferences becoming ever more ridiculous.

While US negotiators are striving to keep concrete climate action to a minimum, in public they take care to present themselves as concerned global citizens.

White House Special Envoy Jim Connaughton said that his counterparts around the world were often, “surprised and impressed by the scale of our ambition”, while managing to keep a straight face.

According to the EU, who are playing a more progressive role in these talks, the US is now the “chief roadblock in Bali” by refusing to commit to a 25-40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Furthermore, the US chief negotiator, Under-Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, said that “there is much we can do to address the critical issue of adaptation” while doing her best to remove any mention of more money from the text.

Best of all was the US line on addressing the problem of getting new green technology to developing countries.

Jim Connaughton said that the US was “engaged in transfer and receipt of technology on a massive scale” because it was one of the world’s largest overseas investors.

The implication here is that if only the developing world lowered its barriers to US companies, and relied purely on the private sector to deliver public benefits then the technology problem would solve itself.

It is as if the track record of US companies overseas counts for nothing.

In Mexico, where, far from building the technology of the twenty-first century, US companies like General Motors moved their gas-guzzling cars, to circumvent both labour and environmental restrictions.

But even if the US private sector was completely genuine about building a new green economy this would still leave millions of people unable to afford the market rate.

Without a clean technology discount the climate will pay the price when people fail to make the switch from oil, gas and coal.