Following the December 2009 United Nations Summit on Climate Change (COP 15), international analysts drew attention to the fact that nothing was actually decided, or made legally-binding. In fact, everything was left to be decided by each individual nation, and a deadline, January 31, was imposed so that countries have time to assess their national priorities, and submit their emissions reduction targets. With the deadline now gone, response to the international initiative is lacking at best, with only a few dozen states having submitted their proposals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Chemistry World reports.

One of the good pieces of news is that 90+ nations have already made public their intentions to engage with the treaty, and try to make it work. However, this still means that more than half of the world's nations have still not made any official commitments of reducing GHG emissions for the foreseeable future. The draft document on which the new pledges were made was put together in the last hours of the Copenhagen summit by a group of nations including the world's two leading polluters, China and the United States.

The agreement acknowledges the fact that the rise in global temperatures needs to be kept below 2 degrees Celsius. However, this rise is smaller than the one advocated by a group of island nations, that wanted warming kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. These countries stand to lose the most when the polar ice caps melt, as most of their territories will be covered under feet of water. In addition to this provision, the draft also called for a reduction of overall GHG emissions, more investments in clean energy, and for the creation of an international fund to help nations in disaster-prone areas develop without having to sacrifice the world's riches, such as for instance the rainforest.

But analysts consider these efforts to be totally insufficient to address the magnitude of the problem that is global warming. This is a “disappointingly small step in the right direction. Unless they are followed by much stronger pledges for the post-2020 period, I cannot see how the atmosphere's CO2 concentration could remain below 450ppmv [parts per million volume], at which the chances of meeting the 2°C target are only roughly one in three. Is that a gamble we are willing to take?” asks University of Reading climate modeler Paul Williams.