NUSA DUA (BALI): Calling climate change “the moral challenge of our generation,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told ministers and delegates at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change here that the eyes of the world were on them as they decided the future shape of the global fight against climate change.

However, talks to launch negotiations for a post-2012 agreement stalled on Wednesday as delegates disagreed on the basic reference points for any such agreement and what it should contain. The first commitment period of the UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol, which mandates just over five per cent cuts in the greenhouse gas emissions of industrialised nations, expires in 2012.

Scientific evidence

Negotiators, trying to forge a “Bali Roadmap” to launch negotiations, wrangled over whether to mention scientific evidence of the need for emissions cut in the range of 25-40 per cent below the 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the guidelines for the talks. While the European Union, supported by most developing nations, is aggressively pushing for the target range to be included in the text, it is being opposed by the U.S., Canada, Japan and Australia, which say any mention of numbers will prejudge the negotiations.

Faced with such opposition, Mr. Ban warned that it might be too ambitious to agree on such target guidelines at this conference. “Practically speaking, this will have to be negotiated down the road,” he said, adding what was important now was to launch formal negotiations immediately with a 2009 deadline. He emphasised that any new deal must be comprehensive, involving all nations.

Developing countries are reading his statement and similar statements by developed countries to mean that the pressure to bring on board the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, the United States, could lead to compromise. That could even include a new agreement that abandons the Kyoto Protocol.

India’s concern

“We are concerned at the attempts to create a new framework, which may result in the dilution of specific and time-bound commitments on emission reductions by developed countries. This should not be allowed to happen,” said Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology.

His view was echoed by the leader of the Pakistani delegation Munir Akram, who also represents the Group of 77 developing nations and China at the summit. The talks “should not result in the erosion of the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol or the replacement of these by a less equitable instrument,” he warned, reiterating that the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol remained the central multilateral framework for cooperative action to address climate change. Brazil and several other developing countries expressed similar concerns.

Portuguese Environment Minister Francisco Nunes Correia, who is also representing the European Union, reiterated the group’s support for the UNFCCC, but refused to categorically state that the post-2012 agreement would be within the Kyoto Protocol’s framework.

The developing nations want to stick to the Protocol’s formula in any post-2012 deal: mandatory emission cuts only for the developed nations, with the developing economies expected to contribute in other ways. “They [developed countries] are not able to meet their commitments, so they want to wangle out of it by proposing a new deal,” said an Indian negotiator.

In an effort to break the deadlock on these issues, as well as on clean technology transfers and capacity building efforts, the conference host Indonesia convened an informal meeting with a group of about 40 influential nations, including India. These discussions will determine whether the Bali Roadmap, which will be announced at the end of the conference on Friday, produces a clear agenda for the future.