Dec 12 (Reuters) - A 189-nation U.N. climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, has been reviewing progress towards a new U.N. pact meant to be agreed at the end of 2009. The following are among sticking points and decisions at the Dec. 1-12 talks. The meeting is meant to end later on Friday but delegates say it might be extended into Saturday: "POZNAN SOLIDARITY PARTNERSHIP" Host Poland suggested that the outcomes should be called the "Poznan Solidarity Partnership". But many delegates said progress was too scant to deserve a grand title. FUND TO HELP ADAPTATION The meeting was split over how to allow developing nations to get cash from a fund to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change such as more floods, droughts and rising seas. The Pacific island state of Tuvalu accused rich nations of tying up the Adaptation Fund in "red tape" and another developing country delegate said they were being treated "like thieves". Rich nations say there must be safeguards to ensure cash will be properly used. U.N. estimates are that the fund will total $300 million a year by 2012 but that costs of adapting to warming will run to tens of billions of dollars a year by 2030. CARBON MARKETS The meeting was also divided about whether to allow investments in power plants in developing nations to earn carbon credits if they fitted equipment to trap greenhouse gases and pump them underground. Climate negotiators drafted measures to speed up U.N. approval of carbon offset projects in poor nations, under the Clean Development Mechanism. The meeting delayed until 2009 a decision on whether to allow new projects to sell carbon offsets from destroying potent greenhouse gass called HFCs. TIMETABLES The talks agreed to work out by June a first draft text of the climate pact to be agreed in Copenhagen. They also agreed to hold a meeting in March 29-April 8 in Bonn, Germany, another in Bonn from June 1-12 and a third in August/September at a venue yet to be decided. The new climate treaty will be adopted in Copenhagen at a meeting from Nov. 30-Dec. 11, 2009. An 84-page list of the main proposals for the new climate pact -- compiled from thousands of pages of documentation -- swelled to more than 100. It would be cut in coming months. FORESTRY The talks made little progress on proposals to include tropical forests in a new treaty. Forests soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow. A Poznan text added a mention of a "need to promote the full and effective participation of indigenous poeple and local communities". But indigenous peoples objected that it stopped short of talking about their "rights" to land. Environmentalists also said the text did not clearly rule out replacing old forests with faster-growing plantations. KYOTO NATIONS Backers of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the current U.N. plan for fighting global warming until 2012, agreed that a new period beyond 2012 should focus on deeper cuts in emissions -- rather than, for instance, other yardsticks such as the amount of carbon emitted per dollar of economic output. The group reiterated a 2007 statement that rich nations would have to cut emissions on average by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of global warming under scenarios by the U.N. Climate Panel. Almost no countries are considering such deep cuts. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Compiled by Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, Editing by xxxxxx,
The winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, French scientist Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (L), receives her medal and diploma from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf in the concert hall ...
