International negotiators did what they needed to do in Canciin, Mexico, to keep the United Nations climate talks from collapsing into the failure that many had feared. The true extent of their success, however, will depend on what comes next. Working into the small hours of 11 Decem-ber, negotiators agreed that both developed and developing countries will act to reduce green-house-gas emissions - and that those actions will be registered and subjected to some form of international verification. The accord represents a major shift for developing countries, which faced no such commitments under the exist-ing Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. The conference also reached a historic agreement on forest protection, and advanced programmes to help the developing world adopt clean energy and adapt to climate change.
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