Climate talks fail to set post-Kyoto timetable -

The governments of rich nations are being accused of failing to respond to worsening news from scientists about climate change.
In the final hours of the UN climate conference in Nairobi, Kenya, due to end Friday evening, delegates failed to set themselves a deadline for reaching agreement on new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto Protocol ends.
The delay threatens to leave the world in climatic limbo after 2012. Key economic instruments for tackling climate change, such as carbon trading, could collapse without a firm timetable, according to environmentalists and industrialists at the conference.
Delegates from 174 governments have not responded to strictures from UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who on Wednesday scolded them for failing to respond to the warnings of scientists that "global warming trends are perilously close to a point of no return". He added: "The Nairobi conference must send a clear, credible signal that the world's political leaders take climate change seriously."
"What has been startling here is the lack of urgency from ministers. There is little collective spirit or common agenda," says Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth International.
Some government delegates have defended events, pointing out that the conference is early in a cycle of negotiations to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, so big breakthroughs are not to be expected.
Burying carbon
Delegates have, however, agreed to launch a scientific assessment of new technology for capturing and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Britain and Norway are currently trialling a scheme to bury liquefied gas in old oilfields beneath the North Sea.
"Carbon capture and storage technologies will reduce the need for increasing international expenditure on renewable energy since it will provide clean and environmentally sound oil supplies," says Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Ibrahim Naimi, who backs the assessment.
The technology could in future qualify for carbon credits that companies could offset against increased emissions. But the UN's top climate official Yvo de Boer warns that it is unknown how permanently carbon can be buried. "Who would be responsible if it escapes?" he asks.
In another initiative, Brazil and Papua New Guinea won support for a similar scientific assessment of the potential for rewarding developing countries that acted to halt deforestation.
Focus on Africa
The first climate conference in sub-Saharan Africa spent most time discussing how to help the continent. It formally established an Adaptation Fund to help poor countries cope with climate change through work like developing drought-tolerant crops and protecting coastlines from rising sea levels. But currently there is only $3 million in the fund.
New plans were also announced to help African countries benefit from the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. This promotes carbon-saving technologies by allowing rich-world corporations to gain carbon credits by investing in those technologies in the poor world. But applying for project approval is cumbersome, and while Brazil has 193 projects, the whole of Africa has just four.
Many rural parts of Africa without access to electricity grids could use the CDM to develop local solar, wind or micro-hydro electricity, said de Boer. But such gains will mean little if the big industrial emitters do not accept their responsibilities.
In the final session, the meeting agreed to conduct a review of the Kyoto Protocol at its next meeting. Some delegations, including the European Union, saw this as a back-door way of eventually introducing emissions targets for developing countries. But in the end this was excluded by a clause debarring the review from introducing any new commitments.