New climate change deal to take years: U.N. chief

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Backers of the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol
on curbing global warming may need 3-5 years from now to work
out a successor to the pact that runs out in 2012, the U.N.’s
climate change chief said on Tuesday.

Many environmentalists want a new pact in place by 2008 to
help curb a rise in world temperatures. Businesses also want
clear long-term climate rules as soon as possible to guide
investments.

“What I’ve heard in the corridors is a range of years from
2008-10. That seems the ballpark that’s being discussed” among
governments, the U.N.’s Richard Kinley told Reuters during a
climate change conference in Montreal.

Kinley, acting head of the Bonn-based secretariat of the
U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, also said he felt
there was a new mood of concern about the climate after Kyoto
entered into force in February 2005 despite a U.S. pullout.

“The sands are shifting,” he said. Kyoto is meant as a tiny
first step to brake a warming that could cause more floods,
storms, desertification and drive up world sea levels by almost
a meter (yard) by 2100.

Supporters of Kyoto are planning to launch talks on
extending Kyoto at Montreal after a first set of cuts in
emissions, mainly of carbon dioxide released from burning
fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, ends in 2012.

STRAITJACKET

Kyoto obliges about 40 industrial nations to cut emissions
by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. President George
W. Bush pulled out in 2001, branding Kyoto an economic
straitjacket that wrongly excluded developing nations.

Washington has said it is not interested in joining any
negotiations about extra commitments to combat global warming
beyond 2012, preferring a path of big investments in new
technologies without binding caps on emissions.

But Kinley said there would still be efforts at the U.N.
talks to try to get the United States involved in discussing
the future, as well as developing countries such as India and
China which have no targets under Kyoto.

“That’s the issue to watch,” he said. “There’s going to be
a lot of talk, arm twisting and discussion.”

Canada, which is hosting the conference, favors a
twin-track process under which Kyoto backers start would
discuss a successor pact while other countries, like the United
States, start looking at new ways to fight global warming.

Kinley also said the conference, which runs until December
9, was likely to reaffirm detailed rules for Kyoto, including
penalties for noncompliance, on Wednesday despite calls by
Saudi Arabia for a time-consuming amendment to the pact.

“I’m sure that a way will be found to deal with this,” he
said.

And he expressed confidence that the conference would help
to streamline a U.N. scheme promoting investments in cleaner
energies in developing nations, ranging from hydro-electric
plants in South Africa to methane-burning schemes in Brazil.

“The first thing is money,” he said of reforms to the
so-called Clean Development Mechanism. “There’s a widespread
acknowledgment that an ambitious mechanism has been put in
place on a shoestring budget.”