MEXICO CITY — Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said Monday that "conditions have not been met" for a new climate deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a worldwide summit in Cancun in December.

"For Cancun, the conditions have not been met to adopt a new protocol" to replace the Kyoto accord which expires in 2012, Espinosa said.

The Cancun meeting, from November 29 to December 10, aims to firm up "a basic agenda" for the continuation of negotiations, Espinosa said.

The United States and China clashed at climate change talks earlier this month in China, accusing each other of blocking progress ahead of the Mexico summit.

Delegates from more than 200 countries will take part in the next round of UN talks in Cancun.

World leaders failed to broker a new climate treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark, last year, as developed and developing nations battled over who should carry more of the burden in curbing greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming.

European leaders now look set to push China, the United States and a host of emerging powers to extend the Kyoto deal at the crunch talks in Mexico.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has underlined the urgency for an agreement, saying that the poorest communities were already suffering the impact of climate change.

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HANOI — Major talks on global warming next month must provide reassurances for the future of the market in greenhouse-gas emissions beyond 2012, the World Bank's environment chief said Monday.

"What they have to find out is how to ensure that carbon trading does not collapse," Inger Andersen, the Bank's vice-president for sustainable development, told AFP in an interview.

She added that "finding a way that that can be ensured would be very important to the world".

Carbon trading began under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only treaty to set down targeted curbs in man-made gases that trap solar heat, inflicting potentially catastrophic changes to the world's climate system.

Developed countries which have ratified the Protocol, mainly in Europe, can buy or sell credits to help meet their emissions quota.

The Protocol's current roster of pledges runs out at the end of 2012. As a result, the future of the market has been cast into doubt by uncertainty surrounding talks on a global climate treaty beyond this date.

Negotiations resume in Cancun, Mexico from November 29 to December 10 under the 194-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto's parent organisation.

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The progress of climate talks in China, the last formal gathering before a global summit due to begin next month, was “very patchy and much too slow,” a senior European Union official said.

“The gap between the texts on the table at the end of the Tianjin session and the decisions we need to reach in Cancun is still very big,” EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday. “A lot of work will be needed over the coming weeks to bridge this gap.”

The United Nations conference in Cancun, Mexico, which starts on Nov. 29, should “result in a balanced package of decisions” aimed at fighting climate change, Hedegaard said.

The 27-nation EU wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming. It is on schedule to meet its 2020 goal of cutting greenhouse gases by 20 percent from 1990 levels and has said it’s ready to move to 30 percent if other countries follow suit.

It stopped short of setting a more ambitious goal at a global climate summit in Copenhagen last year, citing a lack of comparable effort by the U.S. and China.

In Copenhagen, negotiators failed to reach a binding deal setting a framework for greenhouse-gas reduction for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Instead, they settled for a political accord calling for $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate financing for poor nations. They also vowed to stop global temperature increases at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial times.

Climate Finance

The talks in Tianjin, which ended yesterday, brought some progress on climate finance, technology cooperation, tropical deforestation and adaptation to climate change, Hedegaard said.

Still, there has been “insufficient progress in translating key elements of the Copenhagen Accord into UN texts,” she said. “The lack of progress on these issues, and signs of backtracking on the Copenhagen Accord by certain parties, gives us cause for concern about the balance of the Cancun package.”

Hedegaard said the EU will strive to help ensure the summit in Mexico has a positive outcome and becomes a basis for an “ambitious” and legally binding climate agreement “as soon as possible.” (By Ewa Krukowska)

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The six-day United Nations climate change meeting has ended in Tianjin, with rich and poor countries still divided over responsibilities for emission targets, despite some partial progress.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a news conference on Saturday that the week has "got us closer" to a structured set of decisions that can be agreed at the year-end Cancun summit in Mexico.

"Governments addressed what is doable in Cancun and what may have to be left until later."

At a separate interview with China Daily, Figueres said the meeting laid the groundwork for Cancun, but governments need to increase their efforts.

"It has been a meeting of progress. It helped identify the items that should be addressed and focused on in Cancun," she said.

"At the same time, it must be said that all efforts currently on the table are still insufficient and governments need to step up their efforts."

Stanley So, economic justice campaign manager for Oxfam, said the meeting showed that some substantive building blocks, such as the climate fund, can be achieved in Cancun.

"It's crucial that rich countries don't hold the climate fund hostage to progress in other areas of the negotiations. Treating the new fund as a bargaining chip will result in deadlock and more suffering for vulnerable people in poor countries," So said.

Figueres said governments must ensure "an open door" for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, adding that she is confident governments are searching for ways to do so.

Many rich countries want to "jump ship" from the Kyoto Protocol to a new one, ignoring the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities", which was agreed by all parties and serves as the basis of the UN climate negotiations.

The United States has been targeting China and other major developing countries for not accepting the same monitoring and verification process as it, despite that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change only regulates industrialized countries.

At Tianjin, some rich countries spoke against a second period of pollution reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The first period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Chinese negotiators said such attempts to revamp the Kyoto Protocol have blocked progress.

"They want major developing countries to accept the same obligations on emission reductions, which is an obvious deviation from the Bali Road Map," said Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator.

Victor Menotti, executive director of International Forum on Globalization, said China hosting the meeting during one of its two most important national holidays shows it really wants to show its support for the process of climate change.

Some experts also warned that the growing tension between the US and China, the top two producers of greenhouse gas emissions, may bring a gloomier outlook to the already tangled climate talks.

But the debate about tackling climate change should not be about just two countries, no matter how powerful they are, said So.

"The most savage impacts are felt by those least responsible for causing climate change," So said.

"If effective solutions to the climate crisis are to be found, their views must be heard in the negotiations." (By Lan Lan and Li Jing, China Daily)

Source: People's Daily Online