Stalemate and walk outs at Warsaw UN climate conference

Ban-Ki Moon with Donald Tusk in Warsaw: photo - PAP Radek Pietruszka

PM Donald Tusk said at a joint press conference with the UN chief, in Warsaw for the UN Climate Conference (COP19), that despite Poland's heavy reliance on coal for its energy needs he is "working hard for a rational and efficient compromise on climate protection".

Ban-Ki moon thanked Poland for its work on the climate conference, which is now well into its second week at the National Stadium in the capital, and said that "no single country or organization can not solve this problem alone, but every single country will benefit from efforts to protect the climate".

The COP19 conference has made little progress on finding common ground on emissions cuts and who will pay for them, however.

Developing countries want richer nations to show how they intend keeping a pledge made in 2009 to increase finance to 100 billion USD a year by 2020 to help prepare nations for the economic consequences of cutting back on CO2 emissions.

"The finance issue is creating a lot of anger here," Alden Meyer, strategy director of US environmental group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP earlier in the week as environment ministers arrived at the conference to try and hammer out deals.

Last night the 'G77' group of more than 130 developing countries walked out of late-night talks on climate finance after developed countries led by Australia blocked progress on the issue.

The conference was also thrown into disarray on Wednesday when Poland's environment minister Marcin Korolec learned on Wednesday that he had got the sack amid a government reshuffle by Prime Minister Tusk.

Korolec, who is to be replaced by Maciej Grabowski, was reportedly fired because he had not done enough to accelerate shale gas exploration in Poland.

The sacking of a minister who was in the middle of hosting a UN climate conference drew sharp criticism from green groups.

"Changing the minister leading the climate negotiations after a race to the bottom by parties to the [UN] Convention [on Climate Change] is nuts and shows Prime Minister Tusk is not sincere about the need for an ambitious climate deal,” said Maciej Muskat, director of Greenpeace in Poland. (pg)