'Slim' prospects for climate deal this year

Developing nations are set to be hardest hit by rising temperatures

Prospects of finalising a new binding agreement on climate change by the end of the year are "slim", according to UN climate convention chief Yvo de Boer.

He said the process used to draw up the Copenhagen Accord, the document produced at the end of December's UN climate summit, had worsened distrust.
About 110 countries have endorsed the accord, with others rejecting it.
Mr de Boer was speaking at a three-day meeting here aimed at agreeing steps towards this year's summit in Mexico.
The place of the Copenhagen Accord has been one of the controversial issues, with developed nations such as the US and Australia praising it as useful and something that should be incorporated into any new global agreement.
But developing countries regard it as far too weak, and object to the "undemocratic" nature of the process that saw it drawn up and announced by a small group of nations on the last day of the mammoth Copenhagen summit.
"It has heightened the feeling of distrust within the process," Mr de Boer told BBC News.
"But what Copenhagen also demonstrated is that if a process or procedure is followed that a group of countries does not like, then they have the ability and the power to resist the outcome of such a process."
Two-step process
Clearly, the accord is being resisted by a large group of developing countries.
According to Bolivia's representative Pablo Solon, the carbon constraints are so weak that "we're going to have one half of humanity living in a very difficult situation - without water in some places, in others living underwater.
"Can you imagine - to present this as a solution?"
Many of the countries that have endorsed the accord have added the caveat that they see it only as a step towards a global, binding treaty, and that they want the treaty agreed at this year's summit, in Mexico's Cancun resort in November and December.
The chances of that happening, said Mr de Boer, were "very slim".
"I think that developing countries will want to see what the nature of an agreement is going to be before they will be willing to turn it into a legally-binding treaty, so that basically means a two-step process," he said.
"We first need to get the architecture agreed, and I think that can happen in Cancun; and then once if that architecture is sufficiently interesting to parties, there could be a decision in Cancun to turn it into a new treaty text, and that would have to be finalised later."
Running story
Developing countries have been asking for a intensive sequence of meetings during this year in order to allow enough time to reach the treaty stage.

Campaigners are calling for a binding agreement on emissions

India's delegate Vijai Sharma said that progress was being made on that, and on the process for developing a new agreement.
"It is a very involved process - it is not a sprint, it is a decathlon," he told BBC News.
"As to the character of the agreement - there are different opinions on that, but everyone wants a good outcome."
However, Mr de Boer flagged up one potential stumbling block - the US demand for "symmetry".
In order to placate concerns about losing competitiveness, the US is for example demanding that China and other developing countries should be subject to the same regime on verifying emissions curbs as the industrialised world.
"What the US has also indicated is that it would want to be treated on a par with major develoing countries, and that I think is going to be very difficult," said Mr de Boer.
After the busiest and most fraught period of climate negotiations since their inception two decades ago, Mr de Boer steps down later this year.
His successor is expected to be named soon - possibly later this month - with a number of former ministers in the frame.

BBC NEWS