The UN's climate chief said today she believes countries can snap the deadlock that has lasted for years and sign up to fresh and binding commitments to cut greenhouse gases, after a week of climate talks between nearly 200 countries.
"Countries are now looking at how they might bring about a second commitment period and no longer if there is going to be a second commitment period," climate chief Christiana Figueres said.
The major players on the global stage have laid out their positions since the talks opened on Monday, with China and the United States, the two biggest emitters, each waiting for the other to commit before agreeing to a binding deal.
Canada, Russia and Japan have said they will not renew the 1997 Kyoto Protocol pledges that expire next year, while the European Union wants to broker a new, global pact.
However, China, which like the United States and India is not bound by Kyoto's obligations, has helped revive the troubled Durban talks by saying it could join a legally binding deal to cut its emissions of the heat-trapping gases.
But the head of Brazil's delegation, Andre Correa do Lago, cautioned the focus on a legally binding deal may distract from what could be achieved, if it means concrete action is delayed.
"Legally binding may at the end be more an obstacle than an advantage," he told a media briefing.
Three UN reports released in the last month showed time is running out to curb emissions of the heat-trapping gases that have led to rising sea-levels threatening to erase some island states, crop failures, amplifying droughts and intensifying storms.
Britain's former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott, meanwhile, has accused rich countries such as the United States and Canada of trying to scupper a new climate deal.
The Labour peer said efforts to secure a successor to the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which he helped negotiate, were in danger of failing due to a “conspiracy against the poor”.
He called for the clock to be stopped on the Kyoto provisions, which are due to expire next year, and a “reassessment” in 2015.
Otherwise discussions over a new deal would “wither on the vine”, Lord Prescott warned.
"That is what Canada and America want, and one or two other countries," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It is a conspiracy against the poor. It is appalling.
“I am ashamed of such countries not recognising their responsibilities.” The Kyoto protocol bound developed countries to overall cuts of about 5 per cent in global emissions by 2012, compared with 1990 levels.
But the treaty controversially spared rapidly growing economies such as China, India and Brazil from curbing their emissions.
Several leading nations - including Japan, Russia and Canada - have pulled out of the current negotiations and the US has indicated it will not join in.