VOA News - Officials Gather for UN Climate Change Conference in Bali

VOA News - Officials Gather for UN Climate Change Conference in Bali:

Government officials and environmentalists are converging on the Indonesian island of Bali to debate ways to deal with climate change. As VOA's Nancy-Amelia Collins reports from Jakarta, one of the main topics of conversation at the United Nations-sponsored conference will be a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which expires in 2012.

Armed police officer stands guard near a banner of UN Climate Change Conference as an unidentified foreign tourist walks past by in Nusa Dua, Bali island, 02 Dec 2007

The 1997 Kyoto accord required industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - which are generally thought to be responsible for global warming - by specific amounts by the year 2012.

But developing economies, including China and India, were exempt from the accord. And the United States, then the largest emitter, now second behind China, never formally signed on.

Ten years later, however, most of the world agrees that global warming is a man-made threat. Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar tells VOA he expects that the Bali meeting will achieve more comprehensive results than Kyoto.