Climate talks in high gear

2007-12-12 07:30

Bali, Indonesia - The world must quickly impose deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions or risk environmental and economic disaster, leaders at a climate conference declared on Wednesday, as delegates struggled to overcome a divide over whether rich nations should set reduction guidelines.

The conference, ending on Friday, is tasked with setting an agenda and deadline for negotiations leading to a global warming pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2012. The meeting follows a year of high-profile scientific reports warning of rising seas, droughts and melting ice-sheets because of rising temperatures.

A series of speeches by government and UN leaders on Wednesday coincided with a battle between the United States and the European Union over whether the final conference document should include guidelines calling on industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gases by between 25% and 40% by 2020.

The United States, with ally Japan, is against including the numbers, saying goals should be subject to negotiations in coming years. The EU and developing nations, however, argue that such cuts are needed to keep temperatures below a tipping point of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.

Speakers urged delegates to overcome their differences.

"The eyes of the world are upon us," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "We gather because the time for equivocation is over. The science is clear. Climate change is happening. The impact is real. The time to act is now."

Ban and other leaders laid out the basic parameters of an agreement: that rich nations, as the prime drivers of global warming, should make the first cuts in emissions and help poorer countries develop in a clean way with technology and assistance. Speakers also called on quickly developing nations, such as China, to rein in high levels of pollution.

'Today, the catastrophe is looking large on the horizon'

The most poignant call for action came from island nations, which face possible extinction by rising seas fuelled by global warming.

"Today, the catastrophe is looking large on the horizon," said Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president of the Maldives. "Sea-level data over the past decade confirms our worst fears. Without immediate action, the long-term habitation of our tiny islands is in serious doubt."

Many also called for more robust participation by the United States, which became the only major industrialised nation to have rejected the Kyoto Protocol when Australia signed the pact last week after years of opposition.

Delegates applauded Australia several times on Wednesday after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd handed over ratification papers for the protocol to Ban. Rudd made a clear reference to the need to include the United States, long the leading emitter of greenhouse gases, to submit to mandatory cuts.

"We expect all developed nations - those within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, and those outside that framework - to embrace comparable efforts in order to bring about the global outcomes the world now expects of us," Rudd said.

The United States insisted it was eager to reach agreement.

"We want to launch a process that is open and does not predetermine or preclude options," US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, the head of the American delegation, told reporters.

Specific guidelines

"We hope to identify a way forward that will bridge our differences," she added

Negotiations were to intensify in the final days of the two-week conference.

A version of a revised conference document obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday included specific guidelines for industrialised countries to cut emissions, but it remained to be seen if the 25% and 40% figures would make it into the final document, which was to be released on Friday.

The draft statement also included the word "commitments" for the first time in addressing what rich nations should do to reduce greenhouse emissions. This language may also be opposed by the United States, which has supported only voluntary gas-cut measures so far.

The new document called for consideration of action by developing countries to control emissions. Such countries, led by high-polluter China, maintain that rich countries should take the first steps, while poorer nations put their emphasis on economic development.

Former US Vice President Al Gore - a lead negotiator at Kyoto in 1997 - was to arrive later in the day, fresh from picking up his Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.

- AP