UN Climate Talks Near To End With Disagreements on Finance Deal

(Doha) – Negotiators from nearly 200 countries entered the penultimate day of UN climate talks, divided on near-term finance for poor nations’ global warming mitigation plans. The issue is key to the adoption of a package of plans for limiting climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions, as scientists warn that the world is headed for calamitous warming levels.
But the European Union and United States refused to commit to concrete, new climate funding for the 2013-2020 period, as poor nations and those most at risk from global warming insisted on seeing new numbers. Pledges from individual countries did begin to trickle in, but the EU said tight finances prevented it taking on binding near-term commitments as a bloc, while Washington insisted it was already “doing what we agreed to do.”
The talks in the Qatari capital are meant to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only binding pact on curbing Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, whose first leg expires on December 31. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged negotiators on Tuesday to put aside their differences in tackling the mounting global warming “crisis.”
Negotiators nominated a minister from the Maldives and one from Switzerland representing both the rich and poor side of the finance divide; to try to mediate a compromise. Agreement on financing and a follow-up period for Kyoto should smooth the way to a new, universal climate pact that must be drafted by 2015 and come into effect by 2020.