The focus of attention in international negotiations to draft an anti-global warming framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol is shifting to whether some kind of political compromise will be possible, since reaching an actual conclusion at the 15th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15) seems increasingly difficult.

COP 15 will be held in Copenhagen in December to discuss drafting a successor to the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.

The Japanese government has announced an ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020. The precondition of the goal is that all major emitter countries join the scheme, but will this proposal lead to progress in the negotiations.

In late October, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the secretariat of the UN convention, said it would be impossible to put together the new protocol by the end of the year, partly because negotiations had been deadlocked for nearly two years.

At a special subcommittee meeting held October 9 in Bangkok, delegates from developing countries harshly criticised their counterparts from industrialized nations. One of them said that industrialised countries were trying to abandon and kill the Kyoto Protocol.

The negotiations have become a conflict between the two groups.

The developing countries want the next framework to be an extended version of the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges only industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Opposing  them are a group of industrialized nations demanding a brand new framework in which all countries participate in anti-global warming efforts.

The developing countries insist global warming was caused by industrialized countries and have strongly resisted having to make any promises to accept obligations.

In light of this situation, it looks increasingly likely that a political compromise at the COP 15 meeting is the best that can be hoped for.

Prime Minister Andres Fogh Ramussen of Denmark, which chairs the COP 15 meeting, called on the world’s leaders to attend the meeting, saying that if they did so it would be possible to reach a political agreement.

His plans include such options as:- A new protocol will be made and major emitter countries will make some promise to cut emissions.