UN climate talks in Doha have been extended as delegates from rich and poor nations disagree on funding.
Talks scheduled to end on Friday spilled into the early hours of Saturday, as negotiators scrambled to find consensus on an interim plan to rein in climate change and smooth the way to a new deal that must enter into force in 2020.
With no signs of progress, a sign went up in the conference media centre around 4am (01:00 GMT) to announce that a “presentation of outcomes and next steps towards closure” would be made at 7.30am.
“They are still talking,” Al Jazeera’s Nick Clark, reporting from the conference, said. “No deal has been made over 13 days. The issues are finance; the United States and the bigger states don’t want to make concessions for poorer states.”
Meanwhile on Saturday, Qatar proposed keeping an existing UN plan for fighting climate change in place until 2020 an attempt to break a deadlock at talks over a new deal to curb world greenhouse gas emissions. The OPEC nation hosting the negotiations also suggested putting off until 2013 a dispute about demands from developing nations for more cash to help them cope with global warming.
The UN’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol will expire by the end of the year if it is not extended and has already been weakened by withdrawals of Russia, Japan and Canada. Its supporters, led by the EU and Australia, account for just 15 per cent of world greenhouse gas emissions.
The main goal of the Doha meeting is to extend the greenhouse gas-curbing Kyoto Protocol. Expiry of Kyoto would leave the world with no legally binding deal to confront global warming, merely a series of national laws to rein in rising carbon emissions.
UN climate talks go into overtime in Qatar
