Poznan, Poland - UN climate change talks focussed Tuesday on how rich countries can help poorer nations curb emissions of global-warming gases, with governments struggling to craft a "shared vision" for a wider deal due within a year. Providing so-called clean technology to emerging nations like China and India - and how to pay for it - is a key sticking point at this year's UN conference that began Monday.
At issue are emissions of gases, mainly carbon dioxide created when fossil fuels burn, that scientists say are changing Earth's climate. China, but also many countries in eastern Europe, rely heavily on cheap coal for their energy needs.
"The idea is how can we all work together to build a low-carbon society," said French climate envoy Brice Lalonde, whose country currently chairs the European Union.
"It's a huge investment programme. We would like to show that this is the economic path for tomorrow," he said.
But fresh work on that "shared vision," launched at a UN conference last year, got off to a slow start at the two-week meeting in Poznan, Poland, as delegates from some 190 countries squabbled over priorities in the meeting schedule.
The procedural dispute, resolved late Monday, reflects tensions between rich, emerging and poor countries over the scope and speed of the negotiations.
Developing nations are pressing industrialized countries to move toward new targets for emissions cuts, while rich countries are focussed on getting poorer nations to cut their own pollution in exchange for as yet unspecified help with clean technology.
"There is clearly a need for more dialogue," said Savio Carvahlo of Oxfam, the international pressure group.
Environmentalists backed developing nations in calling for industrialized countries - historically the biggest polluters - to take the first step.
"They really need to show leadership," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Kaisa Kohonen. "In this deadlock, it is industrial countries who have to move."
Under a timeline agreed in UN talks last year, developed and developing countries are aiming for a global deal to cut greenhouse- gas emissions by next December.
The accord would replace a 1997 treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol that set binding emissions caps on industrialized nations. Developing countries were exempted and the United States, the longtime biggest polluter, declined to join.
Stifling progress toward a new deal was a rift in the 27-nation European Union over its own climate protection plan, although the dispute may get resolved during the UN talks.
Italy and a group of ex-communist eastern European countries - including conference host Poland - are balking at a EU plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions at least 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, saying the required shift toward cleaner energy is too expensive.
Meanwhile, negotiators are awaiting a promised shift in US climate policy after president-elect Barack Obama takes office on January 20.
In a reversal of the Bush administration's much-criticized policies, Obama has pledged to reduce US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to introduce a nationwide pollution permit system that will force dirty industries to pay.
With President George W Bush's envoys still representing the US, no breakthrough was expected at Poznan on key impasses that need to be solved over the next year.
Among them is an agreement on specific targets for global reductions in emissions by 2020 and 2050. Developing nations won't agree to a long-term target unless industrial countries agree on a mid-term target.
"The obvious reason we won't get a target for 2050 here is because the US refuses to submit a 2020 target," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based group that advocates clean energy.
