Bali Island, Indonesia - Environment ministers from around the world started talks Wednesday at a UN climate conference to reach a mandate for negotiations for a new global convention to protect the climate. The ministers' aims are to hammer out a roadmap for a pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. The Kyoto pact, signed in 1997, took effect on February 16, 2005, after gruelling negotiations to complete its rulebook on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.
However, in its present form, it will not do enough to stem the surge in pollution, which scientists say is badly damaging the Earth's climate system.
The UN climate conference of 190 countries is seeking a roadmap to set the parameters for further negotiations leading to a new accord to accelerate cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions after 2012, when the protocol's current roster of pledges runs out.
Talks on the Bali roadmap are struggling on key questions on how extensive the post-2012 negotiation mandate should be and whether the negotiations should be set to a two-year deadline to conclude.
International environmental group World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) called on the ministers to agree to a blueprint for negotiations.
"More droughts, powerful storms, floods and rising sea levels are among the risks associated with a warming planet," said Hans Verolme, director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme.
"Bali is a leadership moment, for years the climate talks moved at a snail's pace, ministers now need to take charge. Canada, Japan, and the US have been dragging their heels here in Bali, they need to remember that all the world is asking for is for all countries to do their fair share; nothing more, but also nothing less," Verolme said.
The environment ministers in Bali have a draft agreement that sets up an emissions goal and the first-ever attempt to recognize national actions to reduce emissions in developing countries.
The document calls for nations that signed the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol to agree to a total target for reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions after the existing treaty expires in 2012, and decide how each country can individually contribute to that goal.
The Kyoto pact agreed on exactly 10 years ago, requires 36 industrial countries to reduce carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming by an average 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the next five years.
The United States is the only major industrial country not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. President George W Bush contended the emission cuts would harm the US economy, and should have been imposed on China, India and other fast-growing developing economies.
The rest of the world hopes to enlist the US in the next, post-Kyoto phase of internationally binding greenhouse-gas reductions. The change in US administration after next November's presidential election is expected to introduce a new attitude on climate change.
In their first significant agreement, participants at the talks on the Indonesian island of Bali agreed to implement a climate change adaptation fund, which would help developing nations adapt to the adverse effects of climate change, such as drought, floods and crop failures.
Under the agreement, disbursements would begin from the fund, which was a key part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world's first treaty that mandates cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
About 67 million dollars has accumulated in the fund, which is financed by a 2-per-cent levy on transactions under the Clean Development Mechanism, whereby rich countries receive carbon credits, which helps them meet their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, provided they invest in clean-energy projects in poor countries.
The fund is to be administered by the Global Environment Facility, which donor governments established 16 years ago to fund conservation projects. The World Bank is to act as its trustee, and a 16-member board, drawn from rich and poor Kyoto signatories, is to oversee it.
Despite the progress at the negotiations, the lead author of a study commissioned by the United Nations warned that much more money is needed to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change.
