NUSA DUA (Indonesia), Dec 3: A major United Nations climate change conference opened on Indonesia’s Bali on Monday, buoyed by the new Australian prime minister’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

As delegates gathered to craft a road map for talks leading to a new pact addressing global warming, Kevin Rudd ratified the landmark UN treaty as his first official act after being sworn in as Australia’s leader following elections last month.

The move by Rudd, who will also travel to Bali, leaves the United States — the only advanced economy yet to ratify the protocol — increasingly isolated as the world tries to hammer out a plan for when Kyoto expires in 2012.

The 11-day conference, held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and attended by more than 180 nations, comes as evidence mounts of the havoc rising sea levels and extreme weather patterns are set to wreak on world ecosystems and humankind.

Under the new pact, industrialised countries will be pressed to massively reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases from the end of 2012.

Indonesia’s environment minister and the new president of the convention, Rachmat Witoelar, told the opening summit session that there was a building momentum for an agreement to be hammered out here.

“In my consultations, I’ve heard widespread support from governments on launching a process under the convention to conduct negotiations on the future climate regime, and for agreeing on an agenda for these negotiations,” he said.

Environmental group WWF said Australia’s signing of Kyoto would send a strong message to the United States, currently the world’s biggest emitter of polluting greenhouse gas.

“Once we have the USA on board, the world can get on with the job of legislating deep cuts,” WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said in a statement.

Some 10,000 delegates are expected in Bali’s upmarket tourism enclave of Nusa Dua, where they can whizz between the heavily guarded conference centre and lush beachfront resorts on eco-friendly bicycles provided by organisers.

UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer warned that Bali and other idyllic places vulnerable to climate change were destined to become “lost paradises” unless drastic action was taken.

“Public expectations for Bali to provide answers are big. The eyes of the world are upon you. There is a huge responsibility for Bali to deliver,” he said.

Hans Verolme, WWF’s climate change director, said that the worst outcome would be if negotiations ended with a vague statement acknowledging the problem, but offering no concrete plan.

“We need to put some meat on the bones. This is not just a talk about talking,” he said.

Ahead of the Bali meeting, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that damage to the Earth’s weather systems this century would doom poor countries to worse hunger, water stress and damage from violent storms.

Nearly a third of plant and animal species could be wiped out.

The conference is expected to see China, India and Brazil pressured to crank up action against their surging pollution levels, while countries in the frontline of climate change will be clamouring for funds to help them cope.

As part of the conference, Indonesia has invited trade ministers to Bali on December 8-9 and finance ministers on December 10-11. The conference concludes with a Dec 12-14 meeting of environment ministers under the UNFCCC.

The UNFCC’s de Boer has set a triple benchmark to judge Bali’s success: a decision to launch negotiations, and agreement on agenda for those negotiations and an end-date for those negotiations.

Negotiations must ideally conclude in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, giving countries sufficient time to ratify the new treaty so that it dovetails with the end of commitments under Kyoto.—AFP