By Joydeep Gupta
Copenhagen, Dec 15 (IANS) The beleaguered climate summit slipped further from its goals Tuesday as representatives of rich countries failed to raise the extent by which they would reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol - the current treaty to tackle global warming.

A group of environment ministers formed to sort out the issue that has been dogging the Dec 7-18 summit failed to reach new emission reduction targets for the post-2012 period, when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires, according to delegates who attended their closed-door meeting.

It was one of five groups set up by Connie Hedegaard, environment minister of host country Denmark, to sort out the “crunch issues” - as she put it - holding up a Copenhagen agreement. Each group had been given two co-facilitators - one from a rich and one from a poor country - in an effort to reach consensus.

But when this key group’s co-facilitator, Germany’s Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen, asked developed countries for their ideas on how to increase the scale of their emissions targets to within the range of science, the room went completely silent, according to a negotiator from South Africa, who was present.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said GHG emissions - which are warming the planet - must be reduced 25-40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels to keep temperature rise within two degrees Celsius.

But current commitments from rich countries - the only ones legally bound to do so under the Kyoto Protocol - add up to a maximum reduction of 19 percent.

A negotiator from Mexico, who had also been present, said: “We had some strange requests during the meeting. The representative of Japan said at one stage he knew that science required a reduction of 25 to 40 percent, but he wanted the science to be ‘balanced’ by political realities. How does one do that?”

Green NGOs following the negotiations were quick to denounce industrialised countries.

“Their environment ministers have today sent a clear signal to developing countries that they have no intention of increasing their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets in line with what climate science shows is necessary to avert climate catastrophe,” said Martin Kaiser, Climate Policy Adviser with Greenpeace International.

“These talks will end in climate disaster unless developed country heads of state like Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel take control by showing real leadership and commit to strong legally binding targets that achieve at least 40 percent reductions below 1990 levels,” he added.