FACTBOX-How to judge success, failure at UN climate talks

Oct 14 - Talks on a new U.N. climate deal are bogged down before a Dec. 7-18 meeting of 190 nations in Copenhagen -- the following lays out how to judge success or failure.

Most clearly, the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat lists four "political essentials" for a successful new pact, with many details to be filled in later:

1) DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

-- "Ambitious emission reduction targets" for rich nations.

Scientists in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change INSTITUTIONS

-- "An effective institutional framework with governance structures that address the needs of developing countries".

Copenhagen needs to work out the nuts and bolts of how to share out new funds and technologies to developing nations and ensure a transparent system to make their use "measurable, reportable and verifiable". It says that developing countries have to be "equal decision-making partners".

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OTHER RECENT VIEWS

* Jairam Ramesh, India's minister of state for environment, cautioned on Oct. 10 against "exaggerated expectations" for Copenhagen [ID:nLA36403].

He said talks should be cut to focus on three areas -- finance for adaptation to climate change, a deal to combat deforestation and promote forestation, and technology sharing. Countries might need to come back to Copenhagen after December.

Many experts say governments only made concessions to agree the U.N.'s existing Kyoto Protocol at the last minute in 1997.

* "There is no plan B," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told climate negotiators in Bangkok on Sept. 28. "If we do not realise plan A, we go straight to plan F, which stands for failure."

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DEADLINES?

About 190 nations pledged in Bali in December 2007 to agree a new U.N. deal within two years after scientists said action was urgently needed to avert desertification, flooding, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

The first period of the U.N's Kyoto Protocol, which binds industrialised nations except the United States to cut emissions, runs out at the end of 2012. The idea is that a deal in 2009 gives good time for all parliaments to ratify a deal.

Recession is doing part of the job already -- world carbon dioxide emissions are set to fall 2.6 percent this year because of a fall in industrial activity [ID:nLL33147].