Countries most vulnerable to climate change are alarmed by recent proposals from rich and major emerging economies to delay a global deal to curb greenhouse gases until at least 2020, delegates and analysts at UN talks opening said today.
Tasked with forging a plan to stop the juggernaut of climate change, the world's nations were gathering against a backdrop of new evidence that its pace has quickened, its impact deepened.
But the 12-day talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), still fragile after the near collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, are riven with conflict, participants say.
The margin for progress is narrow, and could disappear altogether unless the 194-nations body finds a way to cut through a Gordian knot of discord that has only tightened in recent weeks.
At issue is how quickly major emitters of greenhouse gases – the United States, China, India, Brazil, the European Union and a dozen other countries that account for 80 per cent of CO2 emissions – should step up the transition towards a low-carbon economy.
Recent science shows that the window of opportunity for capping the rise in global temperatures at two degrees Celsius, the threshold for dangerous global warming, is fast closing.
Within five years, it could slam shut, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The only binding treaty to curb CO2 emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, has meanwhile withered to the point where only the European Union – which accounts for 11 per cent of global emissions – is considering new pledges after the first round expires at the end of next year.
