UN opens climate conference

Some 10,000 delegates, activists and journalists from nearly 190 countries gathered on the resort island for two weeks of talks that follow a series of scientific reports this year concluding that the world has the technology to slow global warming, but must act immediately.

The Bali meeting is the first major climate change conference since former US vice president Al Gore - due in Bali next week - and a UN scientific council won the Nobel Peace Prize for their environmental work, fuelling the growing sense of urgency as ice caps melt, oceans rise and extreme weather increases.

"You have on one side a very clear signal from the scientific community telling us what needs to be done, and telling us that it needs to be done now," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the conference. My question for the ministers ... will be, 'What is going to be your answer?'"

The immediate aim of the Bali conference will be to launch negotiations towards a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol on global warming when it expires at the end of 2012, and set an agenda for the talks and a deadline.

The UN says such an agreement should be concluded by 2009 in order to have a system in place in time.

A main thrust of the conference will be to draw the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, into the process. Washington did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that mandatory cuts in emissions would harm its economy and calling into question the veracity of global warming science.

Confronted with the scientific reports of the past year, however, the government of US President George Bush has signalled a willingness to play a larger role in the negotiations, and UN officials agree that they must craft a post-Kyoto framework that Washington will go along with.

Among the most contentious issues ahead will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary, as the US favours. Also on the agenda will be to what extent growing economies like China and India will have to rein in their skyrocketing emissions, and how to help the world's poorest countries adapt to a worsening climate.