Full climate treaty impossible this year: UN

29 Oct 2009, 2:44 pm   -   Source: AP
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The Copenhagen summit to be held in December will try to find a successor to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012. (Getty Images)

The Copenhagen summit to be held in December will try to find a successor to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012. (Getty Images)

Reaching a final global warming treaty will be impossible this year, but the political ingredients of a deal must be settled at a conference in December, the UN's top climate official said.

Reaching a final global warming treaty will be impossible this year, but the political ingredients of a deal must be settled at a conference in December, the UN's top climate official said.

"Time is running out," said Yvo de Boer, the secretary-general of the UN climate change secretariat. "We do not have another year to sit on our hands. The deal must be done in Copenhagen."

De Boer said the key to reaching an accord during the December conference in the Danish capital would be for wealthy countries to offer a financial package to help poorer countries adapt to inevitable climate changes and to shift towards low-carbon technologies for energy and development.

He called on the European Union, whose leaders begin a two-day summit in Brussels, to declare the EU's financial contribution, which he said would push developing countries to announce their own program for limiting the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Money is the oil that encourages commitments and drives action," de Boer said in a conference call with reporters from his office in Bonn, Germany.

At least $US10 billion ($A10.89 billion) should be earmarked for developing countries immediately, he said.

He welcomed a call by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Europe to offer 10 billion euros ($A16.15 billion) in upfront financing.

"It is physically impossible to finalise all the details of a treaty in Copenhagen," de Boer said.

But the Copenhagen meeting must agree on the "political essentials that make a long-term response to climate change clear, possible, realistic and well defined".

The finer points of a treaty should be concluded within one year, he said, so that it is ready to take effect in 2012, when parts of the Kyoto Protocol expire.

The Kyoto accord, signed in 1997 in Japan, took eight years to finish and ratify and required 37 industrial nations to cut carbon emissions by an average 5 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.

The United States rejected Kyoto as unfair and harmful to the US economy.

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Your Comments

Harp on -Penny Wong about the evils of so called climate change -I'm sure you know exactly what you're talking about.

SUE - from PADDINGTON, 3 years ago

I am sick & tired about hearing what the UN's opinion is about this, that and the other...We get it...You (the UN) want to create a one world government. You are using the issue of climate change to achieve this. The ET legislation is not economically sound & will not achieve what climate change activists want. But it does achieve what you want -it will provide you with an enormous income and allow you to rule the world...

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