A two-degree target exposes 100 countries to suffering and means certain death for Africa

IT'S one of the tiniest and least-well known countries, but this week it has effectively held the world to ransom at the giant Copenhagen climate summit.

Tuvalu -- a scattering of nine islands across several hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean -- is, with just 26 square miles of land, the fourth-smallest nation on earth, while its 12,000 people make it the third-least populous. But this week it has been roaring. One of the main reasons is that it is, after the Maldives, the world's second-lowest lying country. So if the seas go on rising with global warming, it will be one of the first nations to be wiped off the map.

Thus it was with survival in mind that the Tuvalu delegate rose on Wednesday and again on Thursday, and caused proceedings to be suspended in the two main negotiating processes in Copenhagen's cavernous concrete Bella centre. This intervention symbolised a new development in international relations -- the revolt of potential victims against the world's biggest polluters.

Up to now, big United Nations' negotiating conferences have boiled down to a confrontation between North and South, the wealthy industrialised countries of temperate climes versus the poorer -- or the dirt poor -- ones, mainly straddling the tropics.

The meeting had started in a more optimistic frame of mind than any I can remember in four decades of tricky negotiations. The Danish hosts and other countries had created momentum in the weeks before it opened.

By the evening before, the centre started filling with 15,000 people from 192 nations -- Polynesian delegates with flowers in their hair jostling with activists dressed as polar bears, face-painted Maasai with smooth-suited financiers -- every major polluter had put an offer on the table of controlling the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet.

And an analysis published yesterday in the conference journal 'Eco' concludes that every one of their offers falls within the range of what is required, with Brazil and Indonesia exceeding it.

Be that as it may, the United Nations Environment Programme and Britain's Grantham Research Institute, chaired by Lord Stern, author of the influential Stern report, have jointly published a study concluding that the best offers on both sides amount to up to 80pc of the minimum needed.

Much of the difference, it added, could be made up of measures to reduce the felling of forests and to reduce pollution from shipping and aviation.

Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, who will chair the summit of some 115 heads of governments when they arrive next week, said that "without exception" they backed "an ambitious agreement to halt global warming."

Connie Hedegaard, his minister for energy and climate, added: "I have never seen anything like it when it comes to political willingness."

Gordon Shepherd, of the WWF International, put it more colourfully: "We are within spitting distance, but it's a very long spit!"

Before long, however, the spitting began in earnest, as the revolt of the potential victims got under way.

On Tuesday evening the meeting erupted. Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the Group of 77, which represents developing countries, announced that the proposed 'two degree target' "exposes over 100 countries to suffering and devastation", leading to the disappearance of low-lying island nations and "certain death" for Africa.

He added the $10bn (e6.8bn) annual fund would not pay for "the poor nations' coffins".

The dispute is fundamental because the amount of greenhouse gases already in the air condemns the world to an increase of at least 1.5 degrees.

Meeting the victims' demand, therefore, would mean either stopping all emissions immediately, which would be impossible, or reducing them much faster than expected and finding a way of getting carbon dioxide out of the air. There is no way that the main polluters, whether industrialised or industrialising, will agree to that.

This confrontation overlays another, along the traditional lines of North versus South. The science makes it clear that emissions of greenhouse gases will have to be cut in half by 2050 if even the two degree target is to be met. Rich countries have accepted that their emissions will have to be reduced by 80 per cent if that is to be achieved, involving an unprecedented transition to low carbon economies.

But, even if they achieve this, developing countries will have to cut their emissions absolutely by then, rather than just reduce their rate of growth as at present. And population growth makes this almost impossible: studies suggest that it will mean cutting their already small per capita emissions of carbon dioxide by 60pc.

They will not agree to try without massive financial help, running into hundreds of billions from the North. So far there is no sign of this.

Even the $10bn emergency fund is mainly being taken from existing aid budgets -- all of Britain's contribution comes from this source.

There is also a third more technical split, which is where Tuvalu's protest came in. Most countries want to keep and improve the existing Kyoto Protocol, which is a legally binding treaty, but the very name of it is anathema in the United States. Tuvalu caused proceedings to be suspended while the issue of what should succeed is sorted out.

This caused huge irritation among developed nations since time is running out as the meeting nears its halfway point.

But some remain optimistic. The negotiations are stepping up a notch with the arrival of ministers. And heads of government hate to be associated with failure and so are likely to be ready to make a deal. But this also has a downside; if the talks do fail, it will be hard to muster the political will again.

Meanwhile, negotiators from Tuvalu and other small islands discovered that their nations had been left off a giant globe hanging in the main hallway of the centre. Last night, they gathered beneath it to protest against being "wiped off the map".

They intend to go on objecting to try to stop that happening in the real world too.

Irish Independent