Negotiators at UN climate talks discuss best formula for securing global warming agreement

BARCELONA, Spain - Countries most vulnerable to climate change said Friday they were incensed that rich nations were rethinking the timetable for concluding a global treaty that would hold them to legally binding targets for cutting emissions.

As delegates entered a fifth and final day of U.N. climate talks in Spain, European nations downplayed expectations for a legal treaty to come out of next month's key climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Instead, negotiators were working to hammer out a draft political agreement in which rich nations would make hard pledges to reduce emissions and to finance aid for helping the world's poorest cope with the affects of Earth's rising temperatures.

Such a deal would carry the authority of world leaders who would come to Copenhagen to sign off on it. Nations would agree to stick to their promises while they continue negotiating the details of a treaty, taking as long as another year.

The shift — an implicit admission of defeat after two years of tough U.N. negotiations — follows acknowledgment that several countries, including the United States, may not be politically ready to sign a legal pact by next month.

A bloc of 43 island nations urged leaders of the world's industrial nations to double efforts toward concluding an ambitious and legally binding pact during at the Dec. 7-18 climate summit.

"There are no practical obstacles whatsoever. All that's lacking now is the political will to finish the job. Weak political declarations are not the solution," said a statement by the chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, Grenada delegate Ambassador Dessima Williams.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he will come to Copenhagen and urged other leaders to join him. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has indicated he may come, and a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is keeping the date open.

The islands, along with the world's least developed countries, are demanding steep emissions cut pledges by the world's developed world that would limit global warming to at most 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures. Industrial nations have been aiming for targets that limit global warming to 2 degrees C above those levels.

Negotiators in Spain, while scaling back expectations for a legal treaty next month, were nevertheless hoping rich nations would bring firm pledges to Copenhagen that would allow 192 nations to sign off on an interim deal.

"A key component is the willingness of (industrial nations) to come up with significant reduction targets," said Shyam Saran, head of the Indian delegation. "We have no indication of what the U.S. will bring to table. Like many others, we are waiting to see what will happen."

Saran said there was still hope for Copenhagen, and that a consensus by all 192 nations would still be binding. "We don't share view that it is no longer possible. If it were no longer possible, we would rather pack up and go home. ... It's not as if the clock has stopped here at Barcelona."

Rather than a legal document, the Copenhagen agreement may take the form of a series of consensus decisions by all the countries. They would include an overarching statement of long-term objectives, along with a series of supplemental decisions on technology transfers, rewards for halting deforestation and building infrastructure in poor countries to adapt to global warming, delegates said.

But a Copenhagen deal will hinge on decisions that can only be taken at the top political level. They include: carbon emission reduction targets by 2020 from industrial countries; firm plans by developing countries to reduce the growth of their emissions; specific short- and long-term financial commitments to poor countries to adapt to climate change; and a mechanism for distributing the funds that will be controlled by the developing countries.

Even an interim deal would clear the way to mobilize funds to help poor countries. The EU has said euro5 billion to euro7 billion ($7.4 billion to $10.4 billion) would be needed in the next three years for developing nations to begin planning their first steps toward controlling their emissions and protecting themselves against the effects of climate change.

By 2020, the EU says, $150 billion (euro101 billion) a year is needed to fight climate change in the developing world.

The delay in brokering a legally binding document is significant. The only instrument for controlling carbon emissions, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, expires in 2012. Unless a new treaty is in place by then, no regulations will exist, threatening chaos among industries relying on predictable rules for their business development.