Updated: UN talks close amid optimism over post-Kyoto deal

A formal global market for forestry-related carbon credits moved a step closer yesterday as the UN's latest round of climate talks in Ghana closed.

Speaking following the week-long summit, UN top climate change official Yvo de Boer said that delegates had agreed to deliver a draft text on potential legislation and mechanisms for tackling global warming ahead of the next round of talks in Poznan, Poland, in December.

"We may have something in Poznan pretty close to a negotiating text," De Boer told reporters, adding that the agreement meant the negotiations were still on track to deliver a deal at the Copenhagen conference scheduled for December 2009.

There was also widespread support among delegates for proposals to improve forestry protection, through increased taxation on the logging industry, new forestry investment funds and the inclusion of forestry protection schemes in the global carbon market.

De Boer said that delegates had recognised that "we cannot come to a meaningful solution on climate change without coming to grips with deforestation ".

However, while most attendees expressed optimism that the negotiations were back on track after a disappointing meeting in Bonn earlier in the year, others counselled that they were still a long way short of a formal agreement and that much would depend on the actions of the next president of the US.

Further misgivings were also voiced about the UN's current carbon trading system, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) with both the World Bank and representatives of the carbon trading sector claiming it was still taking too long to approve those low carbon projects applying for the right to issue carbon credits.

In an official document submitted at the conference, the World Bank said that the processes for approving projects were "expensive and time consuming", while the Carbon Market and Investors Association (CMIA) offered an equally withering submission, claiming that delays were resulting in "losses with regards to both opportunity costs and real costs to CDM project developers".

It recommended that the UN should invest more in the approval process to ensure that the office tasked with checking and processing applications was properly staffed. "A process that can take three meetings, delaying a project by four [to] five months, could be expedited if a full-time [member of] staff was available to consider project issues more frequently," the association noted.

Adam Nathan of the CMIA warned the future of the entire CDM would be in jeopardy if the UN does not act to streamline the project approval process.

"The current arrangements hamper this transfer [of capital to carbon reduction projects] and bring the CDM itself into question in terms of effectiveness from both the perspective of potential new project developers and potential new sources of investment," he said. "Needless to say, in terms of a future international agreement, the effectiveness of the CDM will come under significant scrutiny and the more we can streamline the process now the better. "