Climate progress unlikely at global meeting - GEF

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's lame-duck status means major progress on climate change will be unlikely at an international meeting next month, the chief of a multibillion dollar environmental group said Friday.

Monique Barbut, who heads the Washington-based Global Environmental Facility, had doubts about any big agreements from December's meeting in Poznan, Poland.

The Poznan conference is being convened as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and is meant to help craft a global agreement by December 2009 to succeed the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

"It's going to be very difficult in Poznan to come out with something," Barbut said in an interview. "One of the main players in all those negotiations, which is the United States, is going to be in an almost impossible position to discuss anything."

This is because the administration of President George W. Bush will be in its final weeks when the conference gets under way on Dec. 1, she said.

"Without the U.S. engaging ... the full negotiation on climate change will not make so much sense for everybody else," Barbut said.

Progress is likely to be limited to such basic principles as an agreement that technology transfer and deforestation will be part of the final negotiation, Barbut said. There also could be assent on a baseline year that all countries would use to measure reductions in greenhouse emissions.

She said she expected the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama would be represented at the conference, but this has not been announced.