THE global climate summit in Paris forged a landmark agreement Saturday, setting the course for a historic transformation of the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming.

    After four years of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperiled island states against rising economic powerhouses, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared the pact adopted, to the standing applause and whistles of delegates from almost 200 nations.

    “With a small hammer you can achieve great things,” Fabius said as he gaveled the agreement, capping two weeks of tense negotiations at the summit on the outskirts of the French capital.

    Hailed as the first truly global climate deal, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in rising emissions blamed for warming the planet, it sets out a sweeping, long-term goal of eliminating net manmade greenhouse gas output this century.

    It also creates a system to encourage nations to step up voluntary domestic efforts to curb emissions, and provides billions more dollars to help poor nations cope with the transition to a greener economy powered by renewable energy.

    Calling it “ambitious and balanced,” Fabius said the accord would mark a “historic turning point” in efforts to avert the potentially disastrous consequences of an overheated planet.

    China’s Special Representative on Climate Change, Xie Zhenhua, said China, as a responsible developing country, will take international obligations commensurate with its own national condition, development stage and actual capacity.

    “Although the agreement is not perfect, it does not stop us from moving a historical step forward,” Xie said, calling on developed countries to abide by their promises to provide finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building to developing countries.

    He said China is willing to work together with all parties toward implementing the Paris agreement.

    For U.S. President Barack Obama, it is a legacy-defining accomplishment that, he said at the White House, represents “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”

    The final agreement was essentially unchanged from a draft unveiled earlier in the day, including a more ambitious objective of restraining the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a mark scientists fear could be a tipping point for the climate. Until now the line was drawn only at 2 degrees.

    For the first time, the world has agreed on a longer-term aspiration for reaching a peak in greenhouse emissions “as soon as possible” and achieving a balance between output of manmade greenhouse gases and absorption — by forests or the oceans — by the second half of this century.

    It also requires rich nations to maintain a US$100 billion a year funding pledge beyond 2020, and use that figure as a “floor” for further support agreed by 2025, providing greater financial security to developing nations as they wean themselves away from coal-fired power.

    (SD-Agencies)

    (Read more on P6:

    Action needed after climate talks made breakthrough)