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UN climate talks end in disappointment, finger-pointing

Society Materials 9 October 2010 17:51 (UTC +04:00)
Six days of international talks on climate change ended in disappointment on Saturday, with little sign of progress and host nation China accusing developed nations of backtracking on promises, reported dpa.
UN climate talks end in disappointment, finger-pointing

Six days of international talks on climate change ended in disappointment on Saturday, with little sign of progress and host nation China accusing developed nations of backtracking on promises, reported dpa.

   "We have made some very modest progress, but unfortunately it is very limited," US negotiator Jonathan Pershing said after the talks of the UN Climate Change Conference in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

   "We did not get a balanced outcome yet," Pershing said.

   "The lack of progress gives us concern for the prospects for Cancun," he said, referring to efforts to forge an agreement on binding carbon emissions targets at the UN Climate Summit in Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei said "some developed nations" were "trying to rewrite" the Kyoto Protocol on emissions controls, which expires in 2012, and "shun their emission cut obligations."

"That is a retreat from the past meeting. Any moves that aim to overthrow the Kyoto Protocol should be denounced," Chinese state media quoted Su as saying.

But Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief, put a positive spin on the talks, saying this week's meeting had moved nations "closer to a set of decisions in Cancun."

Figueres urged the world not to "underestimate the size of the task to be undertaken" but said the Tinajin meeting had at least achieved "greater clarity what is doable in Cancun."

Juergen Lefevere, climate strategy adviser to the European Commission, said a "big effort will be needed" to reach an agreement at Cancun, adding that "the gap between the text and the decisions we want to see in Cancun is still very big."

The humanitarian group Oxfam earlier Saturday urged developed nations to give ground in negotiations over a planned global climate change fund, warning that the talks had reached a "crunch point."

"Establishing a new Global Climate Fund that is fair, accessible and accountable, and agreeing on a pathway for a binding agreement, are essential building blocks that must be achieved in Cancun," Kelly Dent, Oxfam's senior climate change advisor, said.

"It is crucial that rich countries don't hold the climate fund hostage to progress in other areas of the negotiations," she said. "Treating the new fund as a bargaining chip will only result in deadlock and more suffering for vulnerable people in poor countries."

At the Copenhagen climate summit in December, rich countries promised to put up to 100 billion dollars a year into the fund. But they have been slow to contribute to the fund's start-up budget, which requires 30 billion dollars by 2012.

   This week's talks brought together 2,500 participants from 160 nations for the first UN climate conference to be hosted by China, the world's most-populous country, which has overtaken the United States as the largest energy user and emitter of greenhouse gases.

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