Journalist Andrew Revkin on his blog Dot Earth on The New York Times  said that “soft is the new hard”, looking optimistically at the shift in climate change negotiantions: on his point of view, “soft” diplomacy, reflected in a new system for pledging national climate actions and now represented by the “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs), is not necessarily bad. He reported some thoughts from others showing a similar opinion, like Robert Stavins, environmental economist at the Harvard University that writes on his blog:

«[…] this latest climate accord moves the process in a productive direction in which all nations will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions […] the Lima decision constitutes a significant departure from the past two decades of international climate policy, which – since the 1995 Berlin Mandate and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – have featured coverage of only a small subset of countries, namely the so-called Annex I countries (more or less the industrialized nations, as of twenty years ago).
The expanded geographic scope of the Lima Call for Climate Action and thereby the incipient Paris agreement – and the emerging architecture of a pragmatic hybrid combining bottom-up “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) with top-down elements for reporting and synthesis of contributions by the UNFCCC Secretariat – represents the best promise in many years of a future international climate agreement that is truly meaningful».

A more critic point of view was expressed by The Guardian which reported the activists’ and delegates’ voices  while defining the agreement a “skirmish before the real battle”.

Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for the environmental group WWF, said on BBC news : «The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it’s very weak indeed.» Nevertheless BBC news judges positively the deal reached in Lima by saying that in the end “none of the 194 countries attending the talks walked away with everything they wanted, but everybody got something”.

For more information:

• The article by Andrew Revkin “In Climate Talks, Soft is the New Hard – and That’s a Good Thing”
• The Guardian view on the Lima climate change conference: a skirmish before the real battle
• World set for climate disaster, say activists, as Lima talks falter, the point of view of activists
• The Hartwell Paper, an international report co-ordinated at LSE showing why efforts to set binding hard targets when dealing with greenhouse gases could be counterproductive and probably delayed progress
• 5 Things You Need to Know From the UN Climate Agreement by 305.org
• 3 climate lessons from Lima, Durwood Zaelke on the Huffington Post