By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks in Kenya next week will hunt for new ways
to fight global warming, stung by a warning that long-term inaction may trigger
a cataclysmic economic downturn.
But delegates say the 189-nation talks from November 6-17 look unlikely to
make any big breakthroughs and may shy away from setting a firm timetable for
working out a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. plan for curbing
global warming which runs out in 2012.
The United Nations says progress is urgently needed, both on a global deal
beyond 2012 and in working out how to help developing nations adapt to projected
changes such as more droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
"The clock is ticking," said Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based U.N.
Environment Program (UNEP). "We are in fact in some ways with our backs against
the wall if you want to have a post-2012 regime in place. We need to keep
moving."
"We need to act very urgently or it's going to get very expensive," said Yvo
de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. Most scientists
say fossil fuels burned in power plants, factories and cars are the main cause
of warming.
But de Boer said there was no pressure yet to set a deadline for completing a
post-2012 pact, noting that a broad "dialogue" on future actions would only end
in 2007. "I don't think there will be pressure in Nairobi to set the date," he
told Reuters.
The meeting, of 6,000 delegates with ministers attending the second week,
will try to work out how to involve Kyoto outsiders led by the United States,
the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and developing nations such as
China and India more closely in longer-term U.N.-led plans.
Kyoto obliges 35 industrialized nations to cut emissions to 5 percent below
1990 levels by 2008-12. Continued...
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