Euractive on climate Chnage

LAGOS, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- The latest round of UN climate talks, which began last Thursday and will conclude this Wednesday in Accra, Ghana, aims at overcoming disagreements over the tools that countries can use to cut greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate progress towards a new climate treaty by the end of 2009, said a recent article from the euractive website.

"There is little time left to get a solid negotiating text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has told some 1,000 delegates from 160 countries at the opening of the six-day meeting.

The article said the meeting is the third UN climate change conference since nations committed, in Bali, to adopting a global climate pact by no later than December 2009. But progress was slow at the last two meetings in Bangkok and Bonn.

Onlookers believe disagreements between developed and developing nations as well as uncertainties about the direction of U.S. climate policy after President George W. Bush leaves office, the economic slowdown and the recent collapse of global trade talks at the WTO will mean delegates at the Accra talks will be uneager to make any firm commitments, according to the article.

In Accra, experts are to attempt to reach agreement on the rules and tools that developed nations can use to reach their emission reduction targets, de Boer explained.

Among the means being considered are the Japanese-led proposals for sector targets, a 'bottom-up' approach whereby different emissions reduction targets would be set for individual industry sectors, such as steel or power generation, according to their specific characteristics and circumstances.

But developing countries are wary of such approaches. They fear that developed nations could use sector benchmarks, such as the amount of energy required to produce a tone of cement, as a means of effectively blocking goods from developing countries' less efficient industries, it said.

The Accra gathering is part of the crucial UN process designed to reach agreement on stronger cooperative action on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009.