Persisten disagreement between developed and less developed countries in UN climate talks have made an international solution difficult to achieve, the top US negotiator said Thursday.
"Let me say bluntly, that the tenor of negotiations in the formal UN track has been difficult," Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change, told the House Select Committee for Energy Independance and Global Warming.
"And yet we must find a way to bridge this developed/developing country divide which is still the heart of the struggle for an international solution," Stern said three months ahead of the Copenhagen conference.
The December 7-18 talks in Copenhagen, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aim to craft a post-2012 pact for curbing the heat-trapping gases that drive perilous global warming.
Developing countries often tend not to see the problem as of their making but feel they are being asked to take part in a solution that could undercut their efforts to improve their people's quality of life.
Highly industrialized countries, however, see climate change as a deeply serious issue with irreversible consequences for the planet, and as an issue that requires participation by developing countries particularly China, he added.
He said 97 percent of the increase in CO2 emissions between now and 2030 will come from the developing world, citing International Energy Agency data.
While developing countries such as China, India, South Africa and Brazil "have started recognizing the seriousness of the problem, their own vulnerability to it and the need for global action. In some case they are taking action," Stern said.
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