COPENHAGEN — U.N. negotiators at the COP15 conference worked through the night Tuesday, increasingly desperate to reach agreement before more than 120 world leaders gather Thursday night and Friday and following an official warning that the stalemated negotiations could doom the conference.
As of Wednesday, despite hints some countries were compromising on secondary issues, there was no progress on the contentious matters, including greenhouse gas emission targets and financial contributions from developed states to the developing world to halt climate change.
Nongovernmental organizations warned that COP15 was in danger of collapsing, and criticized the United States for delaying negotiations Tuesday night by insisting on deviating from U.N.-mandated scientific conclusions on what mitigation actions are necessary between 2012 and 2020 to prevent the worst effects of global warming. Such conclusions were part of the Bali road map to the Copenhagen conference that the U.S. agreed to in 2007.