Initially Australia didn’t want climate change in the G20 communique at all. Then it spent weeks fighting to keep the language vague.



Now, Guardian Australia can reveal the original text of the end of summit statement, the revised text and the inside story of the G20 countries’ fight over its wording.

Australia’s treasurer, Joe Hockey, told the ABC Insiders program on Sunday morning that Australia did agree to include a paragraph on climate change in the first draft of the G20 communique. What he didn’t say is that Australian negotiators have resisted attempts to strengthen it ever since.

The paragraph in the first draft, revealed last week by Guardian Australia, said this: “We support strong and effective action to address climate change, consistent with sustainable economic growth and certainty for business and investment. We reaffirm our resolve to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations framework convention on climate change that is applicable to all parties at the 21st conference of the parties in Paris in 2015.”

The draft available Saturday evening – after weeks of attempts to strengthen it by US and European negotiators – read like this:

“We support strong and effective action to address climate change, consistent with the United Nations framework convention on climate change and its agreed outcomes. Our actions will support sustainable development, economic growth and certainty for business and investment. We will work together to adopt successfully a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations framework convention on climate change that is applicable to all parties at the 21st conference of the parties [COP] in Paris in 2015. We encourage parties that are ready to communicate their intended nationally determined contributions well in advance of COP21 – by the first quarter of 2015 by those parties ready to do so. [We reaffirm our support for mobilising finance for adaptation and mitigation, including the green climate fund.]”

Hidden in all those words is a concession hard-won by US and the EU negotiators in weeks of talks – a call for countries to reveal their environmental targets (the “nationally determined contributions” in diplomat-speak) well ahead of the Paris meeting in 2015 and possibly by early next year.

Australia accepted that change very reluctantly. The country has said it will reveal a target before Paris, but not when, or how it will be determine them, or by what policy it could achieve deeper cuts.

The brackets around the last sentence show that even after the US president, Barack Obama, made a $3bn pledge to the green climate fund – designed to help poorer countries adapt to climate change and crucial to a successful outcome in Paris – support for it, as shown by the wording, was not agreed.

Late on Saturday night Australia was resisting a reference to the green climate fund in the communique, and the decision had been passed up to the office of the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott.

It seemed likely Australia would eventually agree, although Abbott has previously said he would not contribute to the green climate fund, labelling it an international version of the “Bob Brown bank” – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – which he wants to abolish.