Climate negotiators urged to speed up talks

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Aug 21: Indonesia and Denmark called for climate negotiators gathered in Africa to speed up talks to clinch an agreement by next year on how to curb the output of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

“Time flies and therefore we must fly faster,'' Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's environment minister, said on Thursday at the opening of talks in Accra, Ghana. The meeting needs to deliver a “clear package of options'' for restricting emissions, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate minister.

About 180 nations are negotiating a deal, overseen by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. World carbon dioxide emissions from energy use rose 2.8% last year as coal consumption outpaced crude oil and clean-burning natural gas, according to BP Plc data.

Ghana has suffered droughts and floods in the past year, as well as “rolling blackouts'' because a dam that supplies much of the nation's power had insufficient water, Ghana's President John Agyekum Kufuor told negotiators. “The clock is ticking,'' Kufuor said in speeches broadcast on a UN website. “We need more than rhetoric.''

Nations in December agreed to meet through the end of 2009 to negotiate new limits to emissions blamed for climate change, replacing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sets limits for some nations through 2012.