Formal negotiations began Monday in Thailand to create a global climate change treaty to pick up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off in 2012.
More than 1,000 delegates from 163 nations met in Bangkok to take the first steps along the "roadmap" that was set last December at the United Nations conference in Bali, Indonesia.
No major decisions are expected from this weeks talks, which will focus on setting a timetable for additional negotiations leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.
The goal is to complete a successor treaty by the end of 2009 in order to give national assemblies time to ratify it before 2012, and to give investors and companies a window of time to prepare for changes on the economic playing field.
The negotiations are sure to be contentious, as developed and developing nations attempt to agree on reduction guidelines for greenhouse gas emissions. Central to the negotiations will be the United State’s willingness, or lack thereof, to accept mandatory reductions and the willingness of developing nations India and China to commit to reductions as well.
U.N. climate change chief Yvo de Boer said the replacement for Kyoto would be the "most complex international agreement that history has ever seen."
Loading...