Climate talks risk failure unless accelerate: UN
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
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 on Friday after a sluggish week-long session involving 180 countries.
Many nations also bemoaned scant progress at the Aug 10-14 talks that failed to break deadlocks on issues such as sharing out curbs on greenhouse gases among rich and poor, and raising funds to help developing nations cope with global warming.
"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 after the meeting in Bonn.
He said "selective progress" has been made towards trimming a huge 200-page draft treaty text in Bonn, one of a series of talks meant to end with a U.N. deal in Copenhagen in December.
He warned participants that just 15 days of negotiations remain before Copenhagen -- at meetings in Bangkok in September-October and 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 setting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and of trying to get the poor to shoulder more of the burden of emission curbs without providing aid and technology.
"We still have the same problems that have been hindering us," China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters. He said that China was keen to see its emissions peak but that fighting poverty had to remain an overriding priority. Continued...
