Mexico urges India, China to support Cancun talks

NEW DELHI — Mexico urged China and India and the world's other major greenhouse gas emitters to support UN-backed talks on climate change that it will host later this month in the resort city of Cancun.

The appeal came after officials from 35 countries and regional groupings met in New Delhi ahead of the year-end UN talks to try to build on an accord hammered out at marathon talks in Copenhagen widely regarded as a flop.

"We cannot be responsible for the final results as the talks are a UN event," Mexico's Environment Secretary Juan Elvira Quesada told reporters after the two-day meeting in the Indian capital.

"But we hope to have the support of India and China for a balanced outcome to the talks," Quesada said.

Last December's conference in Copenhagen fell short of delivering the binding treaty that nearly all nations say is needed to spare the planet from the ravages of global warming.

Cancun will host negotiators from November 29 to December 10 who are set to discuss a binding agreement on reducing carbon dioxide emissions that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in December 2012.

However, all the major players appear to have given up on the goal of a treaty by year's end that would establish a plan to reduce emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target of the Copenhagen Accord.

One of the major hurdles is a disagreement between the United States and China -- the world's two top greenhouse gas emitters -- on slashing carbon dioxide emissions.

Developing nations including India have resisted a legally binding treaty, arguing that wealthy nations bear primary responsibility for climate change.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh assured support but called for "practical" methods to sort out the thorny issue of intellectual property rights linked to sharing climate-saving technologies.

"We are not the deal-busters and we want to be part of the solution at Cancun," Ramesh said.

"In Cancun we need a decision on what the technology mechanism would look like, how will it be governed and how it is going to be financed," he said.

Mexico has said it is striving to bring countries which felt excluded from the Copenhagen climate talks into the negotiations for this year's summit.

Posted via email from Enviromenment