Pressure on to reach emissions agreement

Industrialised and developing countries will be under intense pressure to agree on greenhouse gas emission reduction targets during week-long negotiations over future greenhouse gas emission targets which kicked off in the Ghana capital Accra on 21 August.

"There is little time left to get a solid negotiation text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told the 1,600 delegation from 150 countries at the opening ceremony.

The Accra meeting is one of a series of working-group sessions between rich and poor countries meant to build consensus ahead of a final meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. The parties have to seal agreements on emissions reduction, mitigation and adaptation.

The Copenhagen talks will be expected to create a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, but preparatory talks between rich and poor countries have so far mainly yielded acrimony. "The clock is ticking, we need to be more pragmatic and move beyond rhetoric to make progress as we move towards Copenhagen," Ghanaian president John Kufuor, who chaired the opening ceremony, told the delegation.