AUSTRIA:Climate negotiators from more than 150 states assembled in Vienna yesterday amid calls for a global deal beyond 2012 to replace the UN's Kyoto Protocol and to include outsiders such as the United States and China.
"Climate change is already a harsh reality, a massive obstacle to development," Austrian environment minister Josef Pröll told the opening ceremony at a meeting of more than 1,000 officials, activists and other experts.
"Climate change is a huge challenge that can only be dealt with at a global level," he said. "We do not have much time."
Activists from Greenpeace, who complain of the slow pace of international climate talks, demonstrated outside the Vienna conference hall with a giant balloon. Activists were also dressed up as giant eyes saying "The World is Watching".
The Vienna meeting, which began yesterday and runs until Friday, is meant to pave the way for a deal among environment ministers when they meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December to launch formal two-year talks on a broader successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
The US, the top emitter of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, is not part of Kyoto.
US president George W. Bush has said that Kyoto was too costly and wrongly excluded 2012 targets for developing countries such as China and India. He has, however, signalled a willingness to join in negotiating a new long-term worldwide pact.
Yvo de Boer, the UN's most senior climate official, said "many encouraging political signals building momentum for action on climate change" had become evident in recent months, such as Mr Bush's pledge to seek "substantial cuts" in emissions. UN reports this year have blamed human activity for global warming over the past 50 years and have forecast worsening disruption from floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.
Mr Pröll, the Austrian host, pointed to monsoons in south Asia and forest fires in Greece as further signs of the type of weather which might become more frequent in the future.
"Today the world's biggest problem is the problem of climate change," said Monyane Moleleki, Lesotho's environment minister, whose country faces worsening droughts. He praised the EU for saying that it would cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020 and said that other nations should establish long-term goals.
But environmentalists said that the global response was falling far short of the promises. Despite lofty promises by heads of state, "when I look around on the ground here, I get nervous", said Hans Verolme, climate expert at the WWF environmental group.
Bill Hare, of Greenpeace, said that many countries were talking about a need for the Bali talks to agree a vague "road map" for working out new commitments. He said that governments needed to agree a firmer "mandate" to negotiate legally-binding commitments. - (Reuters)