KEY POINTS:
Pacific Island countries are pushing for cooler limits on global warming, saying the limits favoured by bigger countries will be disastrous for island-dwellers.
Oxfam New Zealand head Barry Coates, who is in Poznan this week for world climate talks, said a bloc of countries including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu had rejected the limit of 2C above pre-industrial levels favoured by the European Union.
"The small island states are reacting to new evidence that global warming is happening faster than expected," said Mr Coates. "[2C] is really going to have severe impacts, particularly for the smaller states."
The Herald understands the Pacific islands - which negotiate in a group with other island states from the Caribbean, Africa and India - would like the globe to warm less than 1.5 degrees.
But Mr Coates, who was a member of the New Zealand Government delegation to the UN climate change conference in Bali last year, said the call had found little sympathy among bigger nations.
He said the response from rich countries had been roughly "thank you very much, no, that's impossible".
At least 10 New Zealand Government representatives are in Poznan this week. They and other officials will lay the groundwork for new climate-change targets before Government ministers arrive to sign off on the agreements on Wednesday.
The talks are working towards a UN meeting in Copenhagen a year from now, when states will agree on a replacement for the Kyoto protocol. The US has not signed Kyoto - which expires in 2012 - but it is expected to join talks once President-elect Barack Obama takes power. New Zealand Climate Change Minister Tim Groser will fly to Poznan tonight to review the targets negotiators have come up with. The talks began last Monday and close on Friday.
Last month, the National Government announced a complete review of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) - the Labour-designed scheme that was to help New Zealand meet its Kyoto obligations.
Mr Coates said other countries had not commented on the move by Prime Minister John Key during negotiations, but some had expressed concern privately. "It hasn't come up in the official negotiations themselves, but in the corridors and halls some negotiators have expressed surprise that New Zealand would not be going ahead with a scheme that they thought was already agreed ... I think there's some concern that New Zealand might be potentially backing off from its commitments," he said.
Mr Coates said New Zealand might end up with a stronger scheme than the ETS, but "one or two" delegates were concerned the scheme might not gel with climate plans in Australia.
