Countries should stick to their "common but differentiated responsibilities" and hold to their commitments for climate action. Any self-calculation will undercut global efforts in this regard, a China Daily editorial stated in terms of agreement reached at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

That a rulebook was adopted on Dec 15 despite this setback is the result of resilient diplomacy and a triumph for multilateralism, which builds on what was agreed in Paris in 2015 and marks a significant step forward in efforts to address climate change.

The rulebook sets out how countries should report their greenhouses gas emissions and the efforts they're taking to reduce them in a universal and transparent way. It also aims to ramp up the commitments made in Paris, with participating countries agreeing to update their carbon emission reduction goals by 2020.

There is still a long way to go, but the outcome does offer hope that the grave consequences of not putting a brake on global warming are now evident to all and the urgency of doing so has been brought home.