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FOCUS: G20 Fin Mins Come Up Short On Climate Change

By Nicholas Winning and Joe Parkinson, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -(Dow Jones)- Finance ministers from the Group of 20 leading economies failed to make significant progress on climate change issues at their meeting Saturday, with big developing economies reluctant to make commitments before broader talks in Copenhagen next month.

The apparent lack of progress on climate issues doesn't bode well for the United Nations summit in Denmark in December, where nations hope to agree a new global deal to tackle global warming.

Despite a last-ditch effort to broker a deal on climate change financing, the G20 ministers could only agree to keep working to build a consensus before the Copenhagen summit.

"We discussed a range of options and... we commit to take forward further work on climate change finance, to define financing options and institutional arrangements," the G20 finance minister said in a joint statement at the end of their two-day meeting.

The ministers said that to deliver the necessary financing they would need " coordinated, equitable, transparent and effective institutional arrangements."

G20 ministers made little effort to hide the lack of progress, warning that time was running out to broker a deal.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the world couldn't afford failure at the Copenhagen talks.

"We had been willing, and this was a joint position, that the developed countries would of course pay the lion's share and that we would pay for the poorest countries, but the sticking point was that emerging countries would also have to contribute," Schaeuble said.

Just hours after saying that progress was imperative, U.K. Chancellor Alistair Darling said it was "inevitable" that some countries would not want to reveal their negotiating positions for the Copenhagen climate change talks a month before the meeting.

Earlier a Brazilian government source had said Brazil, India and China didn't want to agree new financial commitments at a finance minister level at the G20 summit while climate negotiations were going on elsewhere.

"This isn't the forum for these [climate] talks," the person said.

The weekend's G20 meeting in Scotland was tasked with making progress on the issue of financing efforts by developing countries to combat climate change. This included ensuring that any financial support given to developing nations would be used wisely.

Speaking earlier at the G20 talks, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he had no illusion about the scale of the challenges policymakers still faced ahead of the Copenhagen meeting.

"It is a historic moment: a test of global cooperation every bit as significant as the economic tests we have faced together this year," Brown said. "It is essential that we urgently move toward resolving the issues that still divide our nations."

-By Nicholas Winning, Dow Jones Newswires, +44 207 842 9498; nick.winning@ dowjones.com

(With reporting by Andrea Thomas, Laurence Norman and Nathalie Boschat)

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  11-07-091349ET
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