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IN 2007 it was the ‘‘Bali road map’’ that was supposed to combat climate change. In 2011 it was the ‘‘Durban platform’’ and over the weekend it was the ‘‘Doha gateway’’. But immediately after the Doha conference, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard confused the imagery even further by saying countries at the eighth conference of parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change had managed to cross a bridge.

You could be forgiven for thinking countries were discussing capital works budgets rather than seeking a solution to the diabolical problem of rising global carbon emissions.

In coming years Doha may well be seen as a bridge over troubled waters but equally it may end up a gateway on a road to nowhere.

For pragmatic followers of the cumbersome UNFCCC process, Doha did just enough to make progress. It wasn’t a failure but it certainly didn’t achieve a great deal.

‘‘The Doha deal is unfortunately the best we can hope for at this stage,’’ Australia’s Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions executive vice-president, Elliot Diringer, says.

As countries had agreed at last year’s Durban talks to reach a new global deal by the Paris meeting in 2015, there was not a big headline outcome to be achieved in Doha.

But if expectations were low beforehand, the outcome still managed to demoralise, and a coalition of the EU and poorer countries that emerged in Durban evaporated.

Climate news website Renew Economy reported one French delegate remarking to a colleague: ‘‘We cannot allow this to happen in Paris in 2015. That would be a disaster.’’

At Doha, limited progress was