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Top-level political clout will now decide the outcome of the much-trumpeted Copenhagen conference on tackling the peril of climate change, now just a month away.
Nearly two years of wrangling over a post-2012 UN accord have left a logjam that only national leaders can break, delegates said after a final round in Barcelona.
In the run-up to the December 7-18 192-nation UN parlay, big players will have plenty of chances to make headway if they want.
Summits include gatherings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, bilaterals between the United States on one side and China, India and Japan on the other, and meetings between the European Union (EU) and China and India.
There will also be a restricted ministerial-level meeting among key countries in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations; and talks among major economies that together account for 80 percent of the world's carbon output.
And, in Copenhagen itself, leaders could be there to give a final push in the closing days or hours.
Forty heads of state or government, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, have indicated they will attend the climax.
"All of these meetings provide leaders with the chance to hash out an understanding. They're not starting from scratch," said Antonio Hill of the British development charity Oxfam.
Even so, the drab outcome of Barcelona's five-day huddle suggests Copenhagen will at best yield only a political agreement, not a fully-fledged treaty as initially billed.
Further talks will be needed to put flesh on the framework, and the draft pact may not be concluded until December 2010. And if, as is likely, it takes the form of an international treaty, further time will be needed to ratify it.
These hurdles reflect the gruelling challenge of weaning the world off its dependence on the fossil fuels that have powered two and a half centuries of prosperity, said Alden Meyer of a US-based NGO, the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"We are talking about basically reinventing industrial society over the next 30 or 40 years," he said. "We are talking about a transformation as sweeping as the Industrial Revolution."
These are the negotiation hotspots:
-- EMISSIONS CURBS: Scientists say industrialised countries should cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 to help limit global warming to a safer two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
So far, only the EU and Japan are anywhere close to this in their pledges. Developing countries are demanding cuts of more than 40 percent from their rich counterparts.
Negotiations on this question have been badly held up by the world's No. 2 polluter, the United States. President Barack Obama, while praised for rolling back the policies of George W. Bush, is focussing on getting a climate bill through Congress and has still to declare his hand.
-- AID: There are two big questions here. One is on mobilising money to help developing countries switch to a low-carbon economy and shore up defences against climate change, and the other is agreeing which institutions should be in charge of disbursing the funds.
The EU has estimated 100 billion euros (150 billion dollars) will be needed by annually by 2020. An interim solution at Copenhagen could be a "fast-start" burst of several billion dollars, starting as early as next year.
-- TREATY STATUS: There has been zero headway on the fundamental question of what the future pact should look like.
Developing nations want the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which has tough compliance mechanisms, to be extended beyond 2012, when its current roster of pledges expire.
The United States abandoned Kyoto because it binds only industrialised countries, not emerging giants, to targeted emissions curbs. It is pushing the idea of national commitments backed by report-and-verify compliance rather than tough, internationally-enforceable penalty clauses.
Two possibilities have emerged: an extended Kyoto with a link to the United States; or gutting Kyoto and placing selected provisions of it in a new accord that includes the US.
