As in Kyoto three years earlier, after weeks of acrimonious debate, the climate negotiations at The Hague in November 2000 culminated in the need for a compromise between Europe and a U.S.-led coalition in the wee morning hours of the final day. This time, however, no deal could be brokered. The Kyoto Protocol, prepared in December 1997, had masked irreconcilable differences among participants by papering over many fundamental disagreements among and within the negotiating parties. In Kyoto, nations had specified only the overall national emissions reduction targets, but they had left vague the definitions and had not stipulated the mechanisms available to reach those targets. In so doing, nations had not so much come to agreement as postponed disagreement. It was this vagueness that would ultimately doom the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6) at The Hague.

© 2001 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation