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UN climate talks scramble to reach a deal
UN climate talks have been extended as environment ministers haggle over proposals for a new pact to roll back the threat from greenhouse gases.
Negotiations entered an unscheduled 13th day in South Africa on Saturday after all-night wrangling over the text of a possible agreement.
“The concern now is that time is extremely short,” said European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, spearheading the drive for a legally binding accord by 2015 covering the world’s major carbon polluters.
Earlier drafts at the meeting said negotiations should not begin until 2015, and should not take effect until 2020.
“We still have a lot of text that is not there. It is very difficult to discuss one piece without the other, because in the end the things are interconnected,” said Hedegaard.
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the South African foreign minister, suspended talks late on Friday after a coalition of island
nations, developing states and the EU objected to a text that they said lacked ambition.
It was then agreed that talks would continue into Saturday.
The EU has been rallying support for its plan to set a date of 2015 at the latest for a new climate deal that would impose binding cuts on the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases.
Any deal could then come into force up to five years later.
