UN climate talks falter in extra time

UN negotiators made a last-ditch push Saturday to end a gridlock in climate talks meant to yield a roadmap towards an historic 2015 pact to stave off dangerous global warming. The belligerent negotiations were to have closed at 1700 GMT on Friday, but 17 hours later, diplomats were still shuttling to and fro in a bid to find consensus. The same issues that had divided negotiators at the start of the talks on November 11 remain unresolved now, said delegates. "I urge you to carefully consider the implications of not capturing and finalising this important work in Warsaw," conference president Marcin Korolec of Poland told a stock-taking meeting around 1000 GMT on Saturday. But several bleary-eyed negotiators used the opportunity to raise their dissatisfaction with the process. "My country Bangladesh, and least-developed countries in general, lost the battle," Bangladeshi envoy Quamrul Chowdhury told the gathering of the draft negotiating texts currently doing the rounds. "Our expectations have been again shattered. We are saddened." Envoys for the Group of 77 developing countries and China said they were "discouraged" by the state of affairs. Europe, for its part, said the draft text on a roadmap to Paris had been a "delicate compromise". The Warsaw round of the notoriously fractious annual talks have seen rich and poor nations butting heads for nearly two weeks over their respective contributions to the goal of limiting average global warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels. UN nations had agreed to sign a global deal by 2015 to meet this goal with binding targets for all countries to curb climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. The pact must be inked in Paris in two years' time, and will enter into effect in 2020. Negotiators from over 190 countries argued in the Polish capital over apportioning targets for carbon emissions cuts between rich and poor states, and over funding for climate-vulnerable countries. On current emissions trends, scientists warn the Earth could face warming of 4.0 C or higher over pre-industrial levels -- a recipe for catastrophic storms, droughts, floods and land-gobbling sea-level rise that would hit poor countries disproportionally hard. A major sticking point was the insistence by some developing nations like China and India, their growth fuelled by fossil fuel combustion, to be guaranteed less onerous emissions curbs than wealthy nations. Some want the new deal to impose "commitments" on developed countries, whose long history of emissions they blame for the current state of affairs, and seek only "efforts" from emerging economies. The West, though, insists emerging economies must do their fair share, considering that China is now the world's biggest emitter of CO2, with India in fourth place after the United States and Europe. A draft text that negotiators were mulling over on Saturday underlined that the pact would be "applicable to all parties". Money crunch Money was another bone of contention. Developing nations insist that wealthy nations must show how they intend to keep a promise to ramp up climate aid to $100 billion (74 billion euros) by 2020, up from $10 billion a year from 2010-12. One proposal made on Saturday was for a commitment of $70 billion per year as from 2016. But United States envoy Todd Stern retorted that if negotiations on the finance text were reopened at this late stage, "we will also have several changes we would like to see made". Still struggling with an economic crisis, the developed world is wary of committing to a detailed long- or short-term funding plan at this stage. The funding crunch lies at the heart of another issue which bedevilled the talks: demands by developing countries for a "loss and damage" mechanism to help them deal with future harm from climate impacts they say are too late to avoid. Rich nations feared this would amount to signing a blank cheque for never-ending liability. Observers said a compromise on this point may be announced soon.