Awwal 04, 1432 H / April 08, 2011, SPA -- International negotiations on climate change held this week failed to tackle a host of issues that are pitting developed against developing nations, the chief UN climate change official said Friday, according to dpa. A session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to wrap up late Friday, has left much to be discussed before a climate change summit planned for the end of the year in Durban, South Africa. Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres acknowledged that little had been accomplished to further the progress made last year at the climat e summit in Cancun, Mexico. For instance, the talks failed to put agriculture as well as maritime and aviation emissions on this year's work agenda, she said. Other unsolved issues included agreements to work on global goals for emissions cuts, reviews of past cuts and the legal structure of a climate regime. "All of these big-picture issues did not find space in Cancun, and it is clear after this meeting that they remain on the table," Figueres said. The week-long Bangkok talks to set the agenda for the next session of climate discussions in June in Bonn, Germany, and the Durban meeting were expected to continue late into the night Friday, their final day. "We hope that out of these discussions we will get a meaningful agenda," said Jozsef Feiler, representative of Hungary that currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. An agreement in Bangkok was also hoped for on a second round of commitments on carbon emissions reductions. This week's talks have exposed the stark differences between developed and developing countries over their commitments to a second round of carbon cuts, civil society groups said. Whether or not developed countries would agree to reductions once the initial cuts end with the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in December 2012 has been one of the key bones of contention. Russia and Japan confirmed they are unlikely to join a second round of Kyoto commitments, preferring a pledge-and-review system instead that would allow each country to set their own climate change agenda without any binding, international agreement. Washington has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol and has suggested that such an international pact is unrealistic. Discussions over a second round of the Kyoto Protocol have been ongoing since 2005. "We've come to a crossroads now in the negotations, and it is really time for us to agree once and for all in which direction we're going," said Lim Li Lin, negotiator for the Third World Network, a coalition of environmental and development groups. The debate is essentially over whether countries would commit to an internationally binding system of emissions reductions, based on scientific evidence that the world is heading for a crisis if global warming is not curbed to 2 degrees Celsius from now until 2050, or would move toward a pledge-and-review system championed by the United States. One approach would be to decouple the UN talks from US policy, which is hindered by the political divide between Democrats and Republicans. "More and more countries acknowledge that this may become part of the reality," said Sven Harmeling of the development lobbying group Germanwatch. "There are still a lot of countries that want to go forward. We shouldn't wait for the US." The European Union has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 20 per cent compared with 1990 levels by 2020, but is unlikely to rais the target to 30 per cent unless other large industrialized nations such as the US and Japan agree to matching cuts. "If there are individual parties that do not sign up then there needs to be something else, because without them it will be impossible to address climate change," said Artur Runge-Metzger, the EU's chief climate negotiator. "None of us want South Africa to be the burial ground for the Kyoto Protocol," said Grenadian Ambassador Dessima Williams, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Small Island States.
