Scientists say Durban deal won't avert catastrophic climate change

Scientists and environmental groups warned that urgent action was still needed to rescue the world from climate change, despite the deal sealed on Sunday morning in Durban after two weeks of talks.

Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said: "This empty shell of a plan leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change. If Durban is to be a historic stepping stone towards success the world must urgently agree ambitious targets to slash emissions." Although governments managed to find a last-minute deal that should lead to the first legally binding global agreement on climate change covering developed and developing countries, they did not discuss whether their pledges to cut emissions would prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Under the Durban agreement, governments will now spend four years negotiating how far and how fast each country should cut carbon emissions.

Atkins said the science was clear – the current emissions targets set by developed and developing countries were inadequate, and if they were not strengthened, the poorest would be hurt most. "Millions of the poorest people around the globe are already facing the impacts of climate change – countries like the US who have done most to create this crisis must now take the lead in tackling it," he said.

Other environmental groups and scientists agreed.

"What is positive in Durban is that governments have reopened the door to a legally binding global agreement involving the world's major emitters, a door which many thought had been shut at the Copenhagen conference in 2009," said Bill Hare, director at Climate Action Tracker.

"What remains to be done is to take more ambitious actions to reduce emissions, and until this is done we are still headed to over 3C warming. There are still no new pledges on the table and the process agreed in Durban towards raising the ambition and increasing emission reductions is uncertain in its outcome."

Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics said the current pledges from countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions were not enough to hold global temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which scientists say climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

He said that, according to the United Nations environment programme, countries' current emissions pledges would collectively mean that global annual emissions of greenhouse gases would be about 50bn tonnes in 2020, similar to the total in 2011.

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