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Climate chief pessimistic
13/12/2007 10:33 - (SA)
Nusa Dua, Indonesia - The head of the UN's climate change convention on Thursday said he was deeply worried about the talks in Bali to step up action against global warming, with less than a day left to conclude a deal.
"I am very concerned about the pace of things," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is staging the talks.
"At twelve noon tomorrow (04:00 GMT), the time is up."
De Boer spelled out several interlinked issues that were blocking agreement.
Because of the linkage, "we are, in a way, in a kind of all or nothing situation, in that if we don't manage to get the work done in time on the future, then the whole house of cards basically falls to pieces", he said.
Environment ministers or their stand-ins from more than 180 countries have until Friday to agree to a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire.
The Bali talks do not themselves seek to draw up a new climate pact but instead to set down the parameters for further negotiations that will lead to such a deal.
One of the biggest problems, said de Boer, was over the scope of the "ambition" for the future negotiations.
The European Union, supported by developing countries, green groups and small island states, wants a reference by industrialised countries that a cut of 25-40% in their emissions by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, will be a guideline for those talks.
It says that these figures are essential for showing that rich nations are serious about making concessions to fix a problem that they created and have the most resources to address.
The United States is opposed, and its position is also shared by Japan, Canada and Russia, delegates say.
Another area of discord was over how future talks should address forest loss and help transfer smart, clean technology to developing countries poised to become major emitters.
De Boer said Friday's noon deadline was to give time to translate and distribute the agreed text under UN procedures before the conference's official close at 10:00 GMT.
He ruled out any idea of suspending the conference and resuming it at a later date.
That device was used at a UNFCCC conference in The Hague in 2001 where countries deadlocked over completing the complex rulebook of the Kyoto Protocol.
"I don't think in this case we can afford (another conference)," he said, adding that studies earlier this year from the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had put the issue at the top of the agenda.
"That kind of scientific sense of urgency ... and political momentum is very difficult, I think, to put in the fridge for six months and hope that it isn't past its best-by date when you take it out again," he told reporters.
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