Nations gather in Ghana to talk shop on next climate-change accord 0

Some 1,600 delegates from 160 nations are moving forward on negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol as they gather this week in Accra, Ghana. The meeting is the third in a series of eight that will culminate in the adoption of a new global climate-change accord in Dec. 2009. "The negotiations need to speed up and become more concrete if governments are to meet the deadline they set for themselves," United Nations Climate Change Secretariat Yvo de Boer warned at the beginning of the meeting. And it seems progress is being made, as delegates express a general good feeling toward having developing countries set greenhouse-gas reduction targets for specific industries, while holding developed countries to national targets. The issue is complex and many details remain to be hashed out, but "people are now talking about the same idea in the same language," says one observer. Specific greenhouse-gas reduction targets for developed countries will be discussed at a December meeting in Poland.

• Comments