Climate talks risk failure unless accelerate -UN

BONN, Germany,  (Reuters) – U.N. talks on a new  climate treaty due to be agreed in December risk failure unless  negotiations accelerate, a senior U.N. official said yesterday  after a sluggish week-long session among 180 nations.

Negotiators made scant progress at the Aug 10-14 talks  towards breaking deadlock on a shareout of curbs on greenhouse  gases among rich and poor, or raising funds to help developing  nations adapt to climate changes.

“If we continue at this rate we’re not going to make it,”  Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a  news conference of the Aug. 10-14 meeting in Bonn.

He said that only “selective progress” has been made in  Bonn, one of a series of talks meant to end with agreement on a  new U.N. treaty in Copenhagen in December.

De Boer said that there were 15 days of negotiations left  before Copenhagen, at meetings in Bangkok in September-October  and in Barcelona in November.

“It is clear that there is quite a significant uphill battle  if we are going to get there,” said Jonathan Pershing, head of  the U.S. delegation. But he said there were some signs of  movement.

“You absolutely can get there,” he said.
Developing nations accused the rich of failing to take the  lead in making deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and of  trying to get poor to take on too much of the burden.

China and India want the rich, for instance, to make cuts in  greenhouse gases of at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by  2020 to avert the worst of climate change such as floods,  droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. They say they need  billions of dollars in aid and clean technology to help cope.

“We still have the same problems that have been hindering  us,” China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters of the  rich-poor deadlock.

He said that China was keen to see it emissions peak but  that fighting poverty had to remain an overriding priority.

Many delegates said that a meeting of world leaders at the  United Nations in New York and a meeting of leaders of the Group  of 20 in Pittsburgh, both in September, could help give guidance  and break the deadlock.

The European Union also said that offers on the table by  developed nations fell far short of a goal of limiting global  warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)  above pre-industrial levels.