Climate change effort opens in Poland

POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The first meetings of an effort to craft a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global climate change got under way Monday in Poland, observers said.

The aim of the early gatherings in the city of Poznan, sponsored by the United Nations and involving 10,000 representatives, was to approve working groups that are to draft the treaty's text and get it done in time for a 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Meeting that deadline "is not a done deal," Alden Meyer, director for strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, told the newspaper, saying the 12-day gathering in Poznan is "an opportunity, but it's no guarantee."

The aim of the meetings is ultimately to produce a successor to Kyoto that cuts global emissions enough by the end of the 21st century to prevent a "dangerous" human influence on climate from occurring, defined as holding global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, the Monitor said.

A big challenge will be to persuade developing countries to adhere to the standards, analysts told the newspaper.