India and China Urged to Cut Emissions

A UN climate change conference began yesterday with a call from the most vulnerable developing nations for large and rapidly developing countries such as China and India to do more to tackle global warming.

The group of the 48 least-developed countries plus a group of small island states has previously maintained a united front against what it perceives to be the lack of action from industrial nations which are responsible for the bulk of carbon dioxide emissions.

But its call stopped short of demanding mandatory targets for developing nations. "They are putting proposals not just to industrial countries but also some large emitters that are developing countries to do something about their emissions," said Yuri Onodera, who is representing Friends of the Earth at the conference.

China overtook the US as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide earlier this year, although per capita the US is still far higher.

The meeting, in Vienna, is the last chance for officials to thrash out proposals under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) banner ahead of a higher-level meeting for ministers in Bali in December. That conference is a crucial stepping stone towards a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 but delegates are still a long way from agreeing what a future "son of Kyoto" would look like. They must also decide on a timetable for the agreement and an ultimate goal for a cut in emissions.

The "elephant in the room" at the conference is that the US - which is responsible for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions - refused to sign up to Kyoto. Shortly after the Vienna meeting the US is hosting a "meeting of major economies on energy security and climate change" in Washington. The White House hopes this will produce a parallel agreement in 2008 that would "contribute to a global agreement under the UNFCCC by 2009", but skeptics view it as an attempt to derail the Bali meeting.

"Climate change is already a harsh reality, a massive obstacle to development," the Austrian environment minister, Josef Pröll, told the meeting of more than 1,000 officials, activists and other experts. He added: "[It] is a huge challenge that can only be dealt with at a global level. We do not have much time."

Joseph Zacune, also of Friends of the Earth, said the onus was on industrialized countries - with 13% of global population but 45% of carbon emissions - to solve the problem and that a 90% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 was necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.

Monyane Moleleki, foreign minister of Lesotho, said climate change was having profound effects on his country's agriculture. "The farmers are suffering because nothing happens when it is supposed to - the traditional rainy seasons are no longer predictable. The numbers of droughts have doubled since the late 1970s and when the rains come, they come in torrents," he said.