Or rather, the heads of state made speeches while their ministers and officials toiled through the nights in less public rooms to finalise a 65-page plan of action, and a much shorter declaration of political will. Mind you, that in itself was no mean achievement, given the differences they began with.The preliminary negotiations had been disastrous, so delegates arrived in Johannesburg with more than 400 points of disagreement on the plan of action, and without having even begun to discuss the declaration. To reach any agreement from that start was like winning a Test Match after being forced to follow on.And it was as well that they did. For as John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, told me in the only interview he gave during the summit, the whole system of multilateral negotiations built up through the United Nations over the past 50 years was at stake. If we fail here, he warned, things would “unravel on a scale we have not seen before”.Some senior figures in the Bush administration wanted exactly that to happen, since they find international agreements on everything from the environment to human rights, and from development to arms control, an unnecessary restraint on the activities of the world’s only superpower.

For everyone else it was therefore tremendously important that agreement was reached Some seemed to get carried away by their relief. Margaret Beckett, the UK’s chief negotiator, emerged from the negotiating room to profess herself “delighted” by the summit’s meagre results. “I am in no doubt,” she added, “that our descendants will look back on this summit and say that we set out on a new path.”John Prescott, in conversation, was more circumspect, describing it as “a small step for mankind”. Fair enough – but it is less clear whether the step is forward, backward or sideways.There was one important advance – the acceptance, in spite of determined opposition from the United States – of a target of halving the number of people in the world without even basic sanitation by 2015. But this was no more than a corollary of a target already agreed by world leaders at a summit in 2000, to halve the number without safe drinking water by then. It would have been outrageous if it had not been agreed, and it was cynical of an isolated US to hold the rest of the world to ransom on the issue.That was about the only genuine advance.

After a detailed comparison of the plan of action with previous agreements, Friends of the Earth concluded that it contained only one other new target, on establishing marine reserves – and even that was rather vague.There was some slight progress towards making multinationals more accountable and looking at the over- consumption of resources by rich countries. But that is not much to show, especially after the EU, the conference chairman Nitin Desai, and leaders such as Mr Blair had set up concrete targets and timetables as the touchstone of the conference’s success.Against these gains the summit relaxed a previous target on halting the accelerating loss of wildlife species, agreed a timetable for renewing fish stocks that critics say will actually weaken existing measures, and slightly eroded some of the principles for protecting the environment laid down at the Rio Earth Summit 10 years ago and in subsequent negotiations.Other steps were either sideways, or marching on the spot. Most disappointingly, the summit failed to agree a target for increasing the proportion of the world’s energy generated from clean, renewable sources such as the sun and the wind. No issue better exemplified the twin concerns before the conference.

For two billion people are without any form of modern energy, having to rely instead on wood and animal dung – which give off smoke full of chemicals that kill some two million people a year. Providing clean, renewable sources instead would cut this death toll, preserve precious topsoil by maintaining tree cover and leaving enriching dung – and also combat global warming.Before the summit, a task force set up, on Mr Blair’s initiative, by the G8 leaders – under the co-leadership of Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the former chairman of Shell – recommended concrete measures to bring renewable energy to a billion people by the end of the decade. But this, and all subsequent attempts to set even the most modest of targets, were shot down by Big Oil, represented by the Opec countries and the oilmen in the White House. They inserted clauses promoting nuclear power and the very fossil fuels that cause global warming.This, again was the height of cynicism. For even if oil, gas, coal and nuclear power were unlimited, free, and caused no pollution, it would be simply impossible to get them – or grids carrying electricity generated from them – to the millions of villages scattered through the Third World. The sun, wind and other renewable sources which are distributed free by nature can therefore relieve poverty and protect the environment without even damaging the interests of the fossil-fuel and nuclear lobbies.There were, therefore, plenty of villains at the summit.