Brown: new global climate body needed to accelerate post-Copenhagen talks

A new international body is needed to take charge of future climate negotiations, according to prime minister Gordon Brown.

Speaking in a webcast yesterday, Brown said reforms to the UN climate change body were needed to prevent the talks being "held to ransom" by a small number of countries.

"One of the frustrations for me was the lack of a global body with the sole responsibility for environmental stewardship," he says. "I believe that in 2010 we will need to look at reforming our international institutions to meet the common challenges we face as a global community."

Brown's comments came just days after the UN's Copenhagen Summit broke up amid acrimony and recriminations, after the conference failed to formally endorse the so-called Copenhagen Accord brokered by the US, China and a group of emerging economies, despite only a small number of countries being opposed to the agreement.

In the end the summit agreed to take "note" of the accord after a group of countries, including Bolivia, Venezuela and Sudan, refused to endorse the agreement.

Brown said that reforms were needed to the UN processes that govern international climate change negotiations to ensure that a minority of countries could not block future efforts to agree emissions cuts and deliver a legally-binding international agreement.

"Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks, never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries," he said.

There was also criticism of the failure of the final agreement to include any emission targets - a situation industrialised countries blamed squarely on China.

In an article for the Guardian, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said Beijing had ''vetoed'' moves to include targets to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 and reduce emissions from industrialised countries by 80 per cent by the same date.

''We did not get an agreement on 50 per cent reductions in global emissions by 2050 or on 80 per cent reductions by developed countries. Both were vetoed by China, despite the support of a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries,'' he wrote.

Attention will now turn to the next major UN climate change meeting in Bonn in the Spring when negotiators will again come together and attempt to begin progress towards a binding agreement to be signed at a summit in Mexico next December.