Bangkok - UN-sponsored climate change talks under way in Bangkok this week are likely to result in agreements to hold a whole lot more talks over the next two years to hash out a complex international agreement by 2009, participants said Wednesday. "They are going to more or less have to double the negotiating time," predicted Bill Hare of Greenpeace International.
The five-day gathering in Bangkok, coming three months after a landmark agreement was reached in Bali to set a road map for strengthening international action on climate change, is tasked with setting the work programme for negotiations to be concluded by the end of next year on concrete plans to halt increases in global carbon emissions by 2015 and dramatically cut them by 2050.
This week's meeting is also seeking to established the rules for industrialized countries to meet their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to cut carbon emissions within 10 to 15 years as the first real step toward slowing global warming.
Both tasks have been described as complex and challenging.
"We have just one and a half years to complete negotiations on what will probably be the most complex international agreement that history has ever seen," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is hosting the meeting.
Given the time constraints, many observers said they believe that the most substantive outcome from the Bangkok talks would be an agreement toincrease the number of negotiations, which would require new financing.
"If they agree to that [more negotiations], it's a good sign because it means that governments are putting up this money to pay for them," Hare said.
Currently, the next climate change meeting is planned later this year in Poznan, Poland, and then the finale in Copenhagan in 2009.
The Bangkok talks have drawn about 1,200 delegates from 63 countries.
