“I propose to adopt the Bali Action Plan…and as I see no objections…it is so decided.” The speaker of those words, Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s Minister of Environment and President of the 13th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, then struck the gavel on the table.

The audience, overcome with relief and emotion, then rose to its feet for a standing ovation. Thus the adoption of the Bali Road Map proved the climax of long, painstaking negotiations—a hard-fought reward for negotiators’ efforts and observers’ patience. For almost two weeks, negotiators from 192 parties to the convention worked feverishly, sometimes long into the night, trying to craft a final shape to this document—striving to reach a delicate balance between the interests of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, environmental interests and economic interests, present generations and future generations. The proceedings were supposed to conclude on Friday, December 14, but delegates took one extra day for round-the-clock negotiations. The last plenary session was adjourned no less than three times, with losses of mutual trust happening through frequent and significant misunderstandings, before negotiators could agree to adopt the Bali RoadMap. It is necessary to look back a few years to gain a better understanding of why the Bali Road Map is such an important document.

The UN Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992, though ratification and entering into force was still several years away. The Parties to the Convention recognised even back then the threats that global warming posed to the planet and humankind, and that it was necessary to mitigate the effects of climate change. Of course, not all Parties to the Convention were equally responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. (The Parties who assumed their historical responsibility are listed in Annex I of the Convention.)

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the convention’s governing body. A country becomes a Party to the Convention on a voluntary basis; however, the stipulations of Convention decisions become mandatory, and can indeed have significant implications for the economic and social life, legal system or ethical stance of a signatory country.

Obviously, the recognition of climate change as a problem was not enough without taking concrete action. In 1997, during the Third Conference of Parties (COP 3), an outline for the first ever climate change regime resulted in the now-famous document known as the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention. The Kyoto Protocol identified a period within which parties should limit their greenhouse gas emissions by their respectively assigned amounts. This socalled ‘first commitment period’ lasts from 2008 to 2012. Some of the parties (listed in Annex B of the protocol) adopted quantifiable reduction targets for their greenhouse gases emissions. These parties made a commitment to cap their GHG emissions during the first commitment period at a certain level, known as an ‘assigned amount.’ The typical reduction target is 8 percent, meaning that the party agrees not to exceed their 1990 emissions level, which is reduced by 8 percent and multiplied by five years.

Kyoto, which came into force in 2005, also describes ways of applying accounting methods for greenhouse gas emissions, and describes mechanisms for achieving emission targets. Although developing countries did not commit themselves to the reduction targets, the majority have ratified the Kyoto Protocol in order to participate in its economic mechanisms. By the time COP 13 convened in December 2007, only one industrialised country, the United States, had refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This lone holdout has continually expressed concern along the lines that climate change mitigation efforts will place excessive restraints on the American economy.

The scientific community regularly provides the international community with strong evidence that climate change mitigation efforts carried out during the first commitment period are inadequate by far to prevent further rising of the planet’s average temperature. As a higher incidence of extreme weather events has helped to make clear, responding to the direct consequences of climate change has become just as important as mitigation. Nicholas Stern and other economists have issued stark warnings that choosing to postpone action in order to avoid higher costs will merely shift the burden to the near future, at which time costs to address these problems will have risen at least tenfold.

As the Kyoto regime will expire in 2012, the international community is now trying to elaborate the main features of the second commitment period, which is quite a challenge because there have been enormous geopolitical changes since the convention was ratified. Some of the more dynamic economies among so-called developing countries now use greater amounts of energy, and these countries are increasing their GHG emissions in absolute terms. Thus it becomes clear that attempts to prevent global temperature rises will be impossible without the involvement of all geopolitical players.

The Bali Road Map, or Bali Action Plan (Decision 1/CP.13), represents a negotiating programme for strengthening the UN climate change regime beyond the initial commitments of the Kyoto Protocol. Key to the success of the Bali Road Map is the clear involvement of developing countries. “The developing countries are willing to commit … to measurable, reportable and verifiable mitigation actions,” South Africa’s representative said in a plenary deposition. “This has never happened before.

A year ago it was totally unthinkable.” Recognising that developing countries were committed to taking measurable action, the head of the US delegation took the floor for the last time, pledging: “In the spirit of cooperation, the United States will join for the adoption of the Bali Road Map.” The audience greeted this rather unexpected statement with warm applause. Of course, the role of the European Union is difficult to overstate. Having come prepared to encourage compromise and to commit itself to serious reduction targets of 20 to 30 percent, the EU truly steered the course for this round of negotiations.

Does the adoption of the Bali Road Map mean that the international community now has a new climate change regime to save the Earth’s atmosphere? Unfortunately, it provides no such guarantee, which naturally makes the agenda a target for criticism from some quarters. Some environmental groups, hopeful for more drastic and immediate measures to address climate change, are already referring to the Bali document as the “Mother of All Indecisions.” And Washington wasted little time in watering down its own hopeful Bali rhetoric, as White House Press Secretary Dana Perino announced on the very day of road map adoption that the US would not make any further commitments unless the biggest developing nations and emerging economies would take on greater responsibilities of their own. So, is there any hope?

There is definitely some. The success during negotiations on topics not under the Convention but the Kyoto Protocol (such as the Ad Hoc Working Group negotiations, the setting of a 2009 deadline, the Adaptation Fund, and providing scope and content for the Article 9 review of the Kyoto Protocol) are clear evidence that the international climate change community is willing to adopt the next climate regime. There is also a strong chance that COP 13 in Bali, Indonesia, COP 14 in Poznan, Poland (2008) and COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark (2009) will succeed in finalising the next climate change regime.