More than 160 nations agreed late Friday on the first step to drafting an ambitious new treaty on global warming after hours of haggling between rich and poor countries.
The five-day conference in Bangkok also looked for the first time to consider regulating emissions from airplanes and ships, a rapidly growing source of the pollution blamed for heating up the planet.
But rich and poor countries are sharply divided on how to tackle global warming, despite growing fears that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by the end of the century.
The talks set a work plan of four meetings next year to complete a pact by the end of 2009 which would follow the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which requires rich nations to slash gas emissions blamed for warming.
The Bangkok conference ended past midnight on the final day, hours after the scheduled close, with bickering over a Japanese proposal to hold talks soon on the so-called “sectoral approach,” in which each industry is judged separately on eco-friendliness.
“There were differences of opinion on different topics,” UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told AFP.
“It takes time to find a way out and they did.”
Poor nations fear the sectoral approach makes greenhouse gas cuts easier for rich countries because they have cleaner technology, and that it could be a backdoor way to legally require them for the first time to cut emissions.
“I think it needs to be explained better,” de Boer said of the Japanese proposal.
“There was at one stage the perception that Japan was trying to replace national commitments by sectoral approaches and that freaked everyone out,” he said.
“But that view has since been corrected, so I think things have simmered down,” he added.
Japan’s chief delegate, Kyoji Komachi, said that the talks “went very well on the whole.”
“I think we have seen more understanding, but we need to do more,” Komachi told AFP of the sectoral approach.
Japan, which is behind in meeting its Kyoto obligations as its economy recovers from a recession, wanted talks on the sectoral approach to come before it hosts a Group of Eight summit of rich nations in July.
But it is unlikely to get its way, with the sectoral talks expected to come in August, along with talks on deforestation, a key concern for developing economies.
Daniel Mittler, climate and energy adviser for Greenpeace International, said that the Japanese proposal had been “the main stumbling block.” “This meeting should be about saving the planet, not the G8 summit,” Mittler said.
A separate statement approved here by countries in the Kyoto treaty said they would look at how to “limit or reduce emissions” in aviation and shipping.
The air and marine transport industries account for about three percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But the Kyoto treaty did not cover the two sectors, which are by nature hard to classify under individual nations.
Delegates and environmentalists said there was an effort to water down the text by countries that are transport hubs, such as Singapore, or remotely located, such as Australia.
The statement also gave a vote of confidence to carbon trading, in which rich countries and companies trade credits for slashing carbon output, raising the chances that such a system will be included in a post-Kyoto deal.
The United States shunned the Kyoto Protocol, saying it is unfair by imposing no requirements on fast-growing emitters such as China and India.
But the United States and developing nations all committed at a major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to be part of negotiations for another deal that covers the period after 2012 when Kyoto’s obligations end.
De Boer has said that the toughest issue — how much to slash gas emissions after 2012 — will likely have to wait until after the United States has a new president in January.
All three major candidates seeking to succeed Bush have pledged tougher action on global warming.
“If we took all these hours to agree on a work plan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place,” said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil.
“It is a worrisome indication of how these negotiations will develop.”
