The plan for further negotiations only emerged in the early hours of Friday morning after Ministers had intervened during the second week to rescue the conference from abysmal failure. To compensate for the marginal progress that the conference achieved, WWF wants Ministers to introduce new policies at home to promote solutions like improving energy efficiency and renewable energy before the Protocol comes into force. Until Ministers arrived, the hurricane of climate change was blowing in the world outside while here, at the eye of the storm, there was an eerie silence. Governments came to Buenos Aires talking of an action plan for moving ahead with the Kyoto Protocol. Ministers have just managed to prevent a recipe for inaction from emerging from the alphabet soup of Kyoto Protocol articles.
Governments have obviously moved well beyond discussing the science - that's a good development.
There were no expectations of major developments from Buenos Aires compared with last year's breakthrough agreement that produced the Kyoto Protocol. Despite a year of climate-related disasters, Ministers failed to agree strong environmental principles for implementing the Kyoto Protocol, or to reintroduce the science back into the process. The technical workplan agreed in Buenos Aires does move things forward but it provides no assurance that any of the Kyoto loopholes will be closed. Argentina's announcement that it would develop commitments similar to those of industrialised countries has also altered the political landscape in the talks, as has the emergence of strong regional blocs such as Africa in the G77 group.