Bali Forum Backs Climate 'Road Map'

"It has never happened before," van Schalkwyk said of his and other developing countries' willingness to be monitored. "A year ago it would have been unthinkable."

In rapid succession, an array of developing nations reprimanded the Americans.

"If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way," declared Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea's ambassador for climate change.

In many ways, the Bali "road map" agreement marks a turning point in how the North and South will seek to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions, participants and observers said. Rapidly industrializing nations such as China and Brazil pledged to account for their global warming contributions as long as developed nations provide them with clean energy technology and help bolster their ability to respond to climate change.

By contrast, the Kyoto Protocol exempted emerging economies from any climate obligations, even though they are poised to overtake industrialized nations in greenhouse gas emissions within a matter of years.

"What we've seen disappear today is what I would call 'the Berlin Wall of climate change,' " the United Nations' de Boer said. "This document opens up the possibility of countries who are seeing their economies grow rapidly move into a new spectrum level of commitment, supported by developed countries."

The agreement also establishes a mechanism for giving tropical nations financial compensation for preserving their rain forests and calls for expanding financial aid for countries struggling to adapt to climate change.

"We want to do our part," said Conrad, of Papua New Guinea, which has led the fight for a program to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. "It's just a matter of how do we do our part, in an equitable way."

While the Bush administration made some concessions, it also scored a key victory by eliminating explicit language calling on industrialized countries to cut their emissions 25 to 40 percent, compared to 1990 levels, by 2020, a high priority for the European Union. Eventually the Europeans relented, settling for a footnote in the document's preamble that refers to a section in the 2007 scientific report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That section suggests that cuts that deep will be required to keep Earth's average temperature from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.

Hans Verolme, who directs the World Wildlife Fund's climate change program, said the compromise produced a consensus, but "in the process, we lost substance" in specifying how much developed nations must cut emissions.

James L. Connaughton, who participated as chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said reducing developed countries' emissions by even 25 percent over the next 13 years was not achievable. "We want to be ambitious, but cuts that deep, that fast, are beyond reach."

In a statement Saturday, moreover, the White House said it had "serious concerns" about how future talks would "differentiate among developing countries" in terms of demanding cuts.

Denmark's Hedegaard said the road map's most valuable feature is that "the doors are not shut" to a future pact prescribing deep emissions cuts. But she added: "The whole document shows how many stones there are still on this road that need to be removed. . . . There is still no guarantee we will succeed in getting a new global agreement in 2009."

While the United States took most of the public hits here, other nations raised roadblocks of their own along the way. Russia repeatedly questioned the emissions reduction targets outlined by the IPCC, and Canada and Japan also pushed for less specific commitments. India resisted any pledge to make emissions commitments under the new pact, insisting that it should be compensated for forests it has protected in the past.

"We still have an imperfect document," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Now the hard part really starts. How do you put flesh on the bones of that?"