Climate talks must focus more on poor, says UN expert

3.00pm - By ALISTER DOYLE

MILAN - Climate talks in Italy this week should involve poor states more in slowing global warming because the UN's Kyoto protocol governing rich states does not go far enough, the head of a UN commission said on Monday.

Delegates at a UN climate conference in Milan also said that Sunday's parliamentary elections in Russia, which has an effective veto on Kyoto, could make ratification by Moscow more likely -- but not until after presidential polls in 2004.

"We will need stronger measures after Kyoto," Boerge Brende, the chairman of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, told Reuters, saying that the 180-nation talks should focus beyond Kyoto despite uncertainties about Russia.

"We need to start involving developing nations. I'm not saying that they have to promise to cut emissions but they have to take more part in the dialogue," Brende, who is also Norway's environment minister, told Reuters by telephone.

The United States pulled out of Kyoto, which will last until 2012, arguing that it wrongly excluded developing nations and that its targets were too costly. Putin has also expressed worries that Kyoto will brake Russian economic growth.

Brende noted that China was among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, blamed by scientists for blanketing the planet and driving up temperatures.

Kyoto seeks average cuts of 5.2 per cent in rich nations' emissions of greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2008-12. Developing nations have no targets for cuts.

At most, Kyoto would only brake a rise in world temperatures by just 0.15 Celsius (0.3F) by 2100, according to UN estimates. If nothing is done, UN scientists predict that the planet will be 1.4-5.8 Celsius warmer than now by 2100.

The Milan conference, set to review problems of climate change ranging from droughts to the melting of polar icecaps that could push up sea levels, lasts from December 1-12. Environment ministers will attend the finale from Wednesday.

Pro-Kyoto environmentalists expressed hopes that President Vladimir Putin would be more likely to ratify the protocol after this week's elections that saw gains for Kremlin loyalists.

"If Putin goes on to win the presidential election in March as expected, then I believe he will have his eyes on the history books and won't want to be blamed" for undermining Kyoto, said Alexey Kokorin of the WWF environmental group.

He said that Putin might try to link approval of Kyoto to Russia's drive to join the World Trade Organisation.

Senior Russian officials gave conflicting signals last week about whether Russia would say "No". One Putin adviser said that Kyoto was unacceptable in its current form.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which groups scientists studying global warming, said Russia should decide quickly or Kyoto would risk irrelevance.

"If President Putin is inclined to ratify then (the election) has strengthened his position," he told Reuters.

However, he said that Putin should act within a few months. "Beyond that, people will treat it as past history. Something that could have happened but never did."

Russia has a veto because Kyoto will only enter into force if ratified by countries representing 55 per cent of emissions by developed nations. So far Kyoto has reached 44 per cent and needs Russia's 17 per cent because the US 36 per cent is out.

- REUTERS