Times of India , Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Correspondent : Staff Reporter

VIENNA: The UN says momentum is building for tougher long-term action to fight global warming beyond the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and a climate meeting starting in Vienna on Monday will be a crucial part of the process. Negotiators from more than 100 countries at the August 27-31 talks will seek common ground between industrial nations with Kyoto greenhouse gas caps until 2012 and outsiders led by the US and China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters. "Momentum is very much building," for wider action, Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, said. "And Vienna’s going to be crucial." The Vienna talks will try to break a diplomatic logjam and enable environment ministers to agree at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to launch formal two-year negotiations to define stiffer long-term curbs on greenhouse gases. "All countries need to take more urgent action," South Africa wrote in an advance statement for the Vienna talks. "The pace of the climate negotiations is out of step with the urgency indicated by climate science." Chances of a deal in Bali have risen sharply after reports this year blamed human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, for a changing climate set to bring ever more severe monsoons, heatwaves, droughts and rising seas.

SOURCE : Times of India, Tuesday, 28 August 2007