Did the outcomes at Copenhagen meet your expectations for the Pacific Island Nations?

Did the outcomes at Copenhagen meet your expectations for the Pacific Island Nations? Tuvalu especially seemed to make the headlines for a number of days, but what effect did this have on the Conference's end result?

You can see from my list/answer to the Question – What are the next steps following this Conference? that Tuvalu was one of the six countries which opposed the Copenhagen Accord. (While Tuvalu was certainly well-intentioned, it ended up in some unfortunate company, voting alongside Sudan among others: see the blog by David Doniger for a fascinating account of the final session at Copenhagen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-doniger/the-copenhagen-accord-a-b_b_402299.html). But Tuvalu’s real moment of fame came earlier at Copenhagen when it spoke out in favour of extending the Kyoto Protocol approach (economy-wide targets) to all countries, developing as well as developed. Since it was a lone voice on this, breaking the “G77+China” (i.e. developing country) consensus, Tuvalu made the headlines. But the island state’s intervention had no effect other than to cause delay. Countries like Tuvalu simply don’t count next to the US and China. And even more fundamentally, what Copenhagen has made clear is that the Bali Roadmap – which requires economy-wide emissions targets for developed countries, and offers a more flexible range of targets for developing countries to accept - is the only basis for an agreement on climate change. Trying to deviate from the Bali Roadmap, as Tuvalu tried to do, is an exercise in futility. The Bali Roadmap rules out economy-wide targets for developing countries, and there’s nothing Tuvalu or any other country can do about that.

Clearly, the Copenhagen Accord didn’t meet Tuvalu’s expectations. I’m sure that other Pacific Islands were disappointed as well. But they did support the Accord, as did the Maldives, presumably recognizing that there was no alternative on offer. Perhaps they were encouraged by paragraph 12 of the Accord which calls for a re-assessment of long-term climate objectives by 2015, including the implications of a 1.5 degree temperature rise, the alternative goal put forward by island nations. I’ve given my own views on the Accord several times now. To repeat, I think it was a major step forward, but that as a world we are moving too slowly and there is still a long and uncertain path ahead.