Local and international activists march inside a conference centre demanding urgent action to address climate change at the U.N. climate talks in Doha. Photo: AP

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent

9:24PM GMT 07 Dec 2012

The latest round of United Nations talks in Doha, Qatar have seen ongoing fights between the developed world and poorer nations on how to stop catastrophic climate change.

As the talks went into the night, scientists warned that the current deal on the table is simply not strong enough.

Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said the world is looking at global warming above 2C.

“It is vitally important to remember that the dangerous experiment we are performing on the climate system through our emissions of greenhouse gases continues unabated, with global emissions still growing at an alarming pace,” he said.

“The climate system will not wait decades for the governments of the world to inch towards an agreement. This trend needs to be reversed quickly. The outcome of the Doha talks is therefore extremely disappointing, if not unexpected.”

Small Island States, in danger from sea level rise, and the Least Developed Countries want more money to help adapt to droughts and floods caused by global warming.

They also want the rich world, that has emitted most of the carbon in the past, to increase targets to cut emissions.

But after two weeks of talks in Doha, Qatar, it looked like any deal will fail to increase ambition.

The EU and a handful of other countries have signalled they will sign up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

This will mean the EU will cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and consider upping ambition in future.

As part of the EU, the UK would be committed to also increasing its own green targets.

However despite hosting the talks and having the largest carbon footprint per head in the world, Qatar has failed to even put forward voluntary targets.

Hosts Qatar, together with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates say they are ready to submit Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), but have not said when they will do it or how ambitious these will be.

The oil and gas rich nations have also failed to put any money on the table.

Negotiations towards a global deal by 2015, that would commit all countries to cutting carbon from 2020, also made little progress.

Poor nations want money for coping with the impacts of climate change increased to $100bn per annum by 2020.

But apart from the UK and a few other European countries, there was little sign of progress towards a ‘mid-term’ offering of $60bn by 2015.

Throughout the day hundreds of activists staged progress calling on the rich world to honour commitments to help the poor cope with climate change.

Many blame the Qatari hosts, who are in charge of the complex talks, for allowing poorly worded texts and failing to lead by example.

Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director, was also disappointed in the talks.

“We are playing political poker with the future of our climate, with the future of our children and grandchildren,” he said.