Government today said it has achieved major success at the Durban Climate Change meet with the parties to the Conference deciding that the Kyoto Protocol to continue for another five years till 2017. Environment Minister Jayanti Natrajan said in a statement in the Lok Sabha that a process would begin to negotiate on the future arrangements for enhanced actions under the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

The Minister informed that another major decision taken in Durban was to launch the Platform for conducting negotiations on the arrangements for a future protocol or a legal instrument with legal force, to be finalized no sooner than 2015 and to be implemented by 2020.

She also sought to clarify that the country had not made any legally binding commitment to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.

The Environment Minister told the House that the issue of an appropriate legal form for the future arrangements by 2020 was a matter of intense debate at Durban.

Some parties led, in particular, by the EU pressed for a form of agreement that should be legally binding on all Parties, but India believes that a legally binding agreement, by itself, was no guarantee for increased ambition or its implementation, as some Kyoto Protocol Parties had recently made unilateral announcements to renounce their legal obligations under the Protocol.