Climate talks hot up as Kyoto expiry date looms

By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - A climate summit in Indonesia this December must launch formal talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012 or face a hunt for alternatives, climate analysts and policy officials said on Thursday.

Time is running short on a new Kyoto deal. Diplomats reckon it will take two years to negotiate a successor pact, and then another two years for national governments to ratify.

Many delegates among 166 nations attending exploratory talks in Bonn this week say they have become gloomier about the chance of formal negotiations starting in Bali, Indonesia.

Without decisive progress it would be necessary to look for fall-back options, Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission's Climate Change Unit, told Reuters.

"That would be triggered if you would really see that Bali would be a failure: if in Bali you would not know how to proceed forward on the negotiations," he said.

"There are a vast number of meetings planned. To say now Bali will be a failure would be completely wrong."

What is needed is a clear plan of action, he said.

"A kind of programme of work, whatever you want to call it, that outlines what needs to be done. Some part of this programme has already been decided last year in Nairobi," he added, referring to agreement to review the Kyoto Protocol and for rich nations which already have emissions caps to negotiate new ones.