BREAKING NEWS

Qatar seeks to extend Kyoto, break climate change deadlock

By REUTERS

DECEMBER 8, 2012 09:26

DOHA - Qatar proposed keeping an existing UN 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 UN'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 industrialized 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 UN 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.

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