Delegates to a UN climate-change conference in Cancun overrode objections from Bolivia and agreed to a framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to establishing a new fund to help developing nations combat global warming.

While the agreements are small in scope, they mark a breakthrough in co-operation among the 193 signatories, who last year made little headway at another UN climate-change summit at Copenhagen.

The Cancun Agreements establish the Green Climate Fund, a framework for providing billions of dollars in funding and technology to poor nations to stave off the threats posed by climate change.

The fund will manage the annual $100 billion pledged to developing countries at the Copenhagen summit, money that is to be handed out beginning in 2020.

The agreements also call for further efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but contain no new hard targets for industrialized nations to meet. The deals "recognized" targets recommended by scientists that call for industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. Current agreements call for 16 per cent reductions.

Delegates hammered out the agreements into the early hours of Saturday morning, with Mexican President Felipe Calderon emerging at 4 a.m. local time to declare the summit "a thoroughgoing success."

The deals broke "the inertia of mistrust" that had permeated the global efforts to reach climate change agreements, Calderon said.

Environment Minister John Baird hailed the Cancun summit as a "success."

But for the third year in a row, activists bestowed Canada with the Colossal Fossil Award for environmental inaction. They say Ottawa abandoned its own commitments to cut greenhouse gasses under the Kyoto protocol.

"Countries know Canada is the only country in the world to take the Kyoto target and walk away from it, and our emissions have just continued to grow," said Clare Demerese, with the Pembina Institute. "So that creates a real credibility gap."

The agreements were approved despite objections from Bolivia, which argued they didn't go far enough to help stave off disaster as a result of climate change.

Bolivian delegate Pablo Solon said the deals should go further to curb emissions, as current targets will lead to temperature increases of up to 4 Celsius, which he said would lead to "ecocide" with the loss of millions of lives worldwide.

Solon also objected to the agreements' adoption in the face of his country's protest.

Although UN climate change agreements are supposed to be embraced unanimously, Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza said that does not "mean that one country has the right to veto" deals that all other countries support.

Environmentalists react

Despite Bolivia's protest, environmentalists were cautiously optimistic about the agreements.

It "wasn't enough to save the climate," said Alden Meyer of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists. "But it did restore the credibility of the United Nations as a forum where progress can be made."

Delegates also hailed the work in Cancun for laying the groundwork for future negotiations.

"The two weeks in Cancun have shown once again how slow and difficult the process is," said Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's top climate official. "Everyone needs to be aware that we still have a long and challenging journey ahead of us to reach the goal of a legally binding global climate framework."

Espinoza garnered praise from delegates and media alike for managing the egos of countries such as Japan and Russia, who resisted calls to agree to further emissions cuts after targets agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

Japanese delegates argued that China, which is now the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, and emerging economies such as India and Brazil, must agree to dramatic cuts because the 37 signatories to the Kyoto agreement now only account for 27 per cent of global emissions.

With a report from CTV's Richard Madan and files from The Associated Press