BBC News Online: Sci/Tech

Ministers tackle global warming

Under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, developed countries are committed to an overall cut of 5.2% in emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from their 1990 levels by 2012.

The ministers are meeting at the fifth UN Climate Change conference to try to work out how these countries can achieve such targets.

At issue are the so-called "flexibility mechanisms", allowing developed countries to trade surplus emissions quotas and to gain credits against their emission targets if they help fund clean energy projects in poorer countries.

But questions remain over monitoring, as well as arguments as to whether large forests which absorb carbon dioxide should be counted as part of a country's reduction.

With much still to be settled, the United States delegation was pushing for the concluding session of talks to be postponed until 2001, although they were outnumbered and the meeting will go ahead as scheduled in November 2000 after an intensified talks process.

The president of the conference, Poland's Jan Szyszko, said he was optimistic that progress towards agreement was being made.

Warning

New research published on the eve of the conference highlighted the risk of failure to tackle global warming.

The UK's Meteorological Office said that without action to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, average global temperatures would rise by about 3C over the next 80 years.

The warmer climate would cause sea water to expand and landlocked glaciers to melt, the Met Office said.

Up to 94 million people would be displaced as sea levels rose by about 40 centimetres, causing coastal flooding in low-lying areas, especially in Asia. And an additional 290 million people would be at risk of malaria, according to the report.

However the UK's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, is expected to highlight significant steps taken by China and India in the battle to curb global warming.

In a keynote speech, he will tell nations that making sacrifices to slow down the rate of carbon dioxide emissions does not mean economies have to be "killed off" - underlining the progress made by China and India.

Emissions of greenhouse gases, caused mostly by traffic fumes and power stations, would have been 50% higher if China had not followed the action plan set out at the landmark Kyoto Earth Summit in December 1997.

The conference in Bonn is scheduled to run until 5 November.

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Internet Links

Fifth UN Climate Change Conference
UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
World Meteorological Organisation
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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