The only aspect agreed upon was that global temperature should not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius.

With President Barack Obama slated to personally chair the Major Economies Forum on Thursday, the US had a lot at stake at Tuesday’s ministerial meeting, where the text of the declaration was to be finalised. Differences among the participants, however, pushed matters to a point where an agreed document seemed unlikely. But India emerged as a key facilitator in getting the developing countries to agree to a declaration while convincing the West to drop the insistence on targets and save everyone the embarrassment of an official failure of talks.

The US, which under Obama is keen to demonstrate leadership on climate change, tried to split the developing world with the aim of getting some sort of target commitment into the declaration. It is learnt that G-5 chair Mexico was amenable to toeing the US line on identifying some long-term target, such as a 50 per cent reduction in emissions, by 2050. However, the other countries in the G-5 — India, China, South Africa and Brazil — closed ranks against the US attempt.

While US is not part of the Kyoto commitments, countries like Japan are willing to set targets based on 2005 levels of emission. But India and China stressed that the Kyoto protocol had fixed 1990 as the base year, and reminded developed economies that they needed to live up to their commitments before expecting developing economies to deliver.

It is learnt that the Indian delegation explained to their US counterparts that if no document is finalised, Obama might be embarrassed at Thursday’s meeting. Besides, the US — and other major economies — is in no position to offer more commitments due to constraints imposed by the recession. The Chinese opposition also illustrated that the US and China are not as close yet to a deal on climate change as is being speculated.

Finally, it was agreed that the declaration would be a political statement enunciating a general commitment to climate change. India went the whole distance to explain that the commitment to climate change cannot be given up. Late last evening, a document was agreed to for consideration of the leaders tomorrow.