Isra-Mart srl:UN climate chief warns Durban offers last chance for carbon market clarity

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The head of the UN climate change secretariat has warned the future of the global carbon market could be thrown into doubt unless this year's annual climate change summit in Durban reaches an agreement on how to replace or extend the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol when it ends in 2012.

Speaking at a summit hosted by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Tokyo, Christiana Figueres said Durban represents the "last opportunity to provide clarity on the carbon market before the end of the commitment period".+

"Durban needs to build on Cancun, not only on the new institutions, but also in terms of increasing certainty of the international framework," she said, adding that the world "needs clarity on the Kyoto Protocol, its flexible mechanisms and the carbon market".

Observers are concerned that if the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is allowed to lapse without an agreement to either extend the Kyoto Protocol or finalise a replacement treaty the legal framework that supports the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism carbon offset scheme and other emissions trading mechanisms such as the proposed REDD forestry protection scheme will be undermined.

The decision on whether to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol is expected to prove one of the main stumbling blocks at the Durban Summit after Japan led opposition to extending Kyoto at last year's UN Summit in Cancun.

Figueres said Japan should retain its national target of cutting emissions 25 per cent by 2020 and also urged officials to reconsider their staunch opposition to any extension of the Kyoto Protocol and re-engage in negotiations with those countries in favour of the agreement.

"How could an international agreement help Japan achieve the full [25 per cent emissions] reduction?" she asked. "What role could the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol or an agreement that contains key elements of the Protocol play in this? You have invested a lot in the Kyoto Protocol infrastructure. With a categorical 'no' to the Kyoto Protocol, Japan risks losing those investments."

Figueres comments came as the UN climate change secretariat yesterday launched a new website designed to track countries' progress towards delivering on the voluntary low carbon commitments made as part of the Cancun Accords.

The website aims to reassure diplomats that national commitments to reduce emissions below business-as-usual measures and step up investment in clean technologies are being met.

Figueres said that 37 developing countries had now submitted formal nationally appropriate mitigation actions, or NAMAs, which provide details of how they plan to pursue low carbon growth policies.

However, she added that the commitments received from industrialised and developing nations under the Cancun Accords amounts to just 60 per cent of what scientists believe is required to limit the temperature increase to the less than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.