Push to extend Kyoto Protocol after climate talks stall

Qatar proposed keeping an existing U.N. plan for fighting climate change in place until 2020 on Saturday in an attempt to break a deadlock at talks over a new deal to curb world greenhouse gas emissions.

The OPEC nation hosting the negotiations among almost 200 countries also suggested putting off until 2013 a dispute about demands from developing nations for more cash to help them cope with global warming.

The U.N.’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol will expire by the end of the year if it is not extended and has already been weakened by withdrawals of Russia, Japan and Canada. Its backers, led by the European Union and Australia, account for just 15 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.

Expiry of Kyoto would leave the world with no legally binding deal to confront global warming, merely a patchwork of national laws to rein in rising carbon emissions.

The draft deal would extend the pact, which had obliged about 35 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period from 2008 to 2012.


The two-week U.N. meeting in the Qatari capital had been due to end on Friday but the talks went on through the night in an attempt to avert failure.

“I believe this is a package we can all live with,” conference president Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said as he presented the Qatari proposal to help combat floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

The proposal would keep alive hopes for a new, global U.N. deal to fight climate change meant to be agreed by 2015 and enter into force by 2020 after successive failed attempts.

The 2015 deal would set goals for all nations, including emerging economies led by China and India that have no targets under Kyoto.

- Reuters