Time to get serious on 'bold' Kyoto successor-WWF

GLAND, Switzerland, Oct 23 (Reuters) The world urgently needs a new climate change accord to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, including violent storms and severe water shortages, the head of the conservation group WWF said.

James Leape, the organisation's director-general, told Reuters that climate change had already gripped the planet to an unexpected degree and would worsen without a clear commitment to bigger carbon emissions cuts after a first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

''It is now urgent that the parties to Kyoto get serious about negotiating the successor agreement. They need to come together on an agreement that is bold,'' Leape said in an interview at the WWF headquarters.

''This is not a time where we can afford a hiatus in the effort,'' he said.

Diplomats at a United Nations ministerial meeting on climate change next month need to pledge commitment to a new deal, and set a schedule for its completion by the end of 2008 to ensure a seamless shift, said Leape, who will attend the Nairobi talks.

Last year the ministers agreed to work out the post-2012 rules as soon as possible but set no deadline.

Many experts say 2008 is too soon and that a deal may have to wait until after US President George W Bush, a Kyoto opponent, leaves office in January 2009.

Leape described calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the European Union to cut carbon emissions to up to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce his state's emissions to 80 percent below the 1990 benchmark by 2050, as the right magnitude for a successor agreement to Kyoto.

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