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As the world's heads of state arrive in Durban, South Africa, to begin the high-level segment of the United Nations climate negotiations, the largest emerging economies said they were united in wanting a legal agreement on the Kyoto Protocol.

 

In their first joint press conference of this instalment of the climate talks, Brazil, South Africa, India and China said on Tuesday they wanted a second commitment period to the 14-year-old Kyoto Protocol.

The first commitment period, which concludes at the end of next year, requires certain developed countries to cut emissions. Developing and vulnerable nations want these countries to sign on to a second commitment period, and others to sign up for binding targets as well.

Chinese lead negotiator Xie Zhenhua also dismissed talk of rifts within the group, known collectively as Basic and as the largest emerging-economy emitters.

But each member of the group had slightly different demands.

China - the world's largest emitter with 24 per cent of global emissions - said it would consider being subject to hard targets after the next scientific report of climate change evidence and risk by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is released, provided its pre-conditions were met. The report is due in 2014.

Those conditions included a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, and the focus to be equally on mitigation, which is cutting emissions, and adaptation, which means helping countries bear the impact of climate change.

Indian Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan wanted developed nations to shoulder more of the burden as they had started industrialising and polluting earlier.

"Developing countries should not be asked to make a payment every time an existing obligation becomes due on the part of developed countries," she said.

The Basic countries also sought to get the Green Climate Fund, agreed on at last year's talks in Cancun, Mexico, up and running with money in the bank.

The fund is supposed to get US$100 billion a year by 2020 to countries that need help tackling climate change. But it is now empty, and details of who should fund it and how have not been decided yet.

At the start of high-level talks on Tuesday, developing and vulnerable countries also reiterated the need for developed countries to take the lead, and warned of dire consequences should negotiations not reach an agreement.

Mr Karl Hood, Grenada's Environment Minister, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), which includes Singapore, said: "We in Aosis have not come here to negotiate ourselves out of existence, but this is what will happen if we give in to some of the proposals put forward in the last couple of days."

Singapore is also part of the Group of 77, the largest inter-governmental organisation of developing countries in the UN.

At the same time, Ms Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for climate action, held fast to the European Union's road map concept, which would require developed and developing countries to say when they would commit to binding greenhouse gas cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

The EU has already committed to cutting emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020.

Even so, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said in his opening statement that "the ultimate goal of a comprehensive and binding climate change agreement may be beyond our reach - for now".

With another two days of negotiations to go, what is left on the table is whether countries will make a legal decision to extend the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period, or table the decision to next year.