Climate deal ‘profoundly distressing’, says Christian Aid

A deal brokered in the final hours of UN climate talks at the weekend is a “betrayal of people across the world”, Christian Aid has said.

The development agency’s climate expert Mohamed Adow said the deal reached at Durban, South Africa, had saved the talks but endangered the lives of people living in poverty.

Climate negotiators spent last week hammering out an agreement on carbon emission cuts. The “Durban road map” commits countries to drawing up a new pact by 2015, to come into force in 2020.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding pact on carbon emission targets, has been extended until 2017.

Mr Adow said the new package was a “disastrous, profoundly distressing outcome” to the talks.

“At a time when scientists are queuing up to warn about terrifying consequences if emissions keep rising, what we have here in Durban is a betrayal of people across the world,” he said.

“By giving themselves until 2015 to agree a new deal which only takes effect in 2020, governments are delaying desperately needed action and condeming us all to dangerous warming of much more than 2 degrees.”

The deadly floods and droughts witnessed in parts of Africa and Asia this year will “get worse and more frequent as climate change bites”, Mr Adow predicted.

Despite an agreement from governments on a climate fund, he warned that the worst affected would be people living in impoverished communities.

“At present, the Fund remains empty and so can do little to help developing countries cope with the crippling costs of climate change and to develop in cleaner ways which won't greatly exacerbate the crisis.”