Four years of tough negotiations on an international legal framework to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change finally concluded at the weekend in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.
The task facing environment ministers and senior officials from 160 countries - including Ireland's Mr Noel Dempsey - was to translate the political agreement reached at the Bonn climate change summit in June into a set of legally-binding rules.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's developed countries agreed to cut their emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for causing climate change by 5.5 per cent, on average, by 2010 as a first step to help avert the worst consequences of global warming.
Though President Bush's announcement last March that the US was pulling out of this commitment might have seemed a death-blow, other countries - led by the EU - managed to reach agreement in Bonn on the broad framework for implementing Kyoto. Issues left over for negotiation at the much lower-profile Marrakech meeting included the establishment of a carbon dioxide emissions trading regime, the use of forestry as "carbon sinks" and other "flexibility mechanisms" to make the process less painful.
Following another round of marathon talks, the EU proclaimed Marrakech as a success and said the conference marked another turning point in the global effort to deal with climate change.
"We can now turn to our citizens and say to them that, finally, action has been agreed to begin to put an end to the dramatic consequences of climate change which are threatening the whole world," Belgian minister Mr Olivier Deleuze said on behalf of the EU.
The Canadian Environment Minister, Mr David Anderson, said the fact there was now a "workable rulebook" to implement Kyoto showed the US was wrong to opt out; the US says it now favours a "tapestry" of national and regional measures.
Mr Jan Pronk, the Dutch minister who engineered the Bonn deal and played a major role in seeing it through in Marrakech, urged the US to climb back on board, saying it should be prepared to take part in a global approach to the problem of climate change.
But even without US participation, the EU remains committed to ratifying Kyoto next year. To come into force, the protocol needs the support of 55 per cent of industrialised countries responsible for at least 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
However, while the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, welcomed the agreement reached at the weekend, he made no specific commitment that his country would ratify it. Japan's endorsement would be crucial in making up the numbers.
While environmental groups gave a cautious welcome to the outcome, Friends of the Earth complained that Marrakech had failed to chart a course for future negotiations on even deeper cuts, which scientists say are required to avert even worse catastrophes than the hurricane that struck Cuba and the Florida Keys last week.
