By DPA
Bogor (Indonesia) : Environment ministers from 35 nations agreed Thursday to negotiate for a long-term treaty on combating climate change after a two-day conference in Indonesia.
The meeting, held in the West Java resort town of Bogor, was tasked with reaching agreement on key issues ahead of a UN-sponsored climate change conference in December on the Indonesian resort island Bali.
The conference will negotiate an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which expires in 2012.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the Bogor talks, which brought together both developed and developing nations, were a litmus test on whether nations supported a long-term pact.
“The answer is an emphatic yes,” he said at a press conference. “The meetings agreed that negotiations on Bali must be launched on the basis of a long-term goal that is demanded by the scientific community.”
De Boer said there was “strong agreement” among ministers that industrialized nations must continue to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, “given their historical responsibility for the problem.”
Professor Emil Salim, head of the Indonesian delegation to the conference, also called on industrialized nations to share technology to ensure that future global agricultural production is not affected by climate change.
“Developing countries are the worst-hit by climate change because it affects their harvests,” he told reporters.
Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s minister of environment added a vote of confidence ahead of the December conference. “As the host of the conference, I’m optimistic that what we want to achieve on Bali will be done.”
Conference participants included the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters, China and the US, as well as India, Malaysia, Australia, Russia and Britain.
Negotiations on a new agreement are to formally begin during the Dec 3-14 Bali conference, and officials said they hope they will be concluded prior to a UN climate change conference scheduled in November 2009 in Copenhagen.