Doubts grow over agreement in Cancun

There are growing doubts that any kind of agreement will be reached in the two remaining days of UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico.

The talks in the Caribbean beach resort have more modest ambitions than at Copenhagen last year, but there are still yawning gaps over the future of the Kyoto Protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations until 2012.

Participants at the two week talks no longer expect an international, legally binding treaty that will commit all countries to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon warned delegates they must be prepared to compromise if an ideal agreement is not possible.

Instead, environment ministers will focus on secondary tools for confronting global warming, including a framework for a multi-billion dollar 'green fund' to assist poor countries cope with climate change.

The green fund would help developing nations buy advanced clean-energy technology to reduce their own emissions, and to adapt to climate change, by building seawalls against
rising seas, for example, and upgrading farming practices to compensate for shifting rain patterns.

Developing nations view such finance not as aid but as compensation for the looming damage from two centuries of northern industrial emissions.

They consider inadequate the 100 billion a year goal set in the Copenhagen Accord and propose instead that richer countries commit 1.5 percent of their annual gross domestic product _ today roughly $600 billion a year.

Developed nations have resisted such ambitious targets.

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