Poland to host next round of UN climate talks

PanARMENIAN.Net - Poland has been officially named the host of the next round of UN climate talks in 2013.

According to RIA Novosti, the decision was adopted on Friday, Dec 7 by negotiators from over 190 countries who gathered two weeks ago in the capital of Qatar, Doha, for the current round of talks.

Deeply divided on funding for poor countries and the fate of unused carbon emission permits, the participants of the Doha conference failed to yield a global climate pact to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Poland, which heavily relies on coal production, was chosen on the basis of geographical rotation as next year marks the turn of East European countries to host the annual event.

The country has been struggling to sell its unused emission quotas as there are only a few potential buyers and developing countries want the emission permits scrapped altogether.

The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was first negotiated in 1997 with the goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

After last year’s Climate Change Conference in Durban, 35 Kyoto Protocol member states agreed to adopt a universal legal treaty on climate change by 2015 after the initial agreement expires in 2012.

The United States has never joined the Kyoto Protocol, while Japan, New Zealand, Canada and Russia have already announced they will not be signing up to a new interim commitment to the treaty.

As a result, the extension would only cover about 15% of the world's emissions of greenhouse gases.