Global warming major threat to humanity-Kenya

NAIROBI, Nov 6 (Reuters) Saying that global warming was among the worst threats ever to face humanity, Kenya urged a 189-nation conference today to do more to fight climate change with special help for the poorest in Africa.

Kenyan drummers and dancers started the annual November 6-17 UN talks, which are also due to seek ways to overcome deep divisions about extending the main UN plan for curbing warming -- the Kyoto Protocol -- beyond 2012.

''Climate change threatens development goals for billions of the world's poorest people,'' Kenyan Environment Minister Kivutha Kibwana told delegates at the first climate talks in sub-Saharan Africa.

''Climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats that humanity may ever face,'' he said. More than 5,000 people are due to attend.

''We face a genuine danger that recent gains in poverty reduction will be thrown into reverse in the coming decades, particularly for the poorest people of the world and especially those in the continent of Africa,'' he said.

Kibwana urged negotiators to ''take concrete actions on immediate priorities''. He said he knew of five-year-old children in his home village in Kenya who had never seen a maize crop - Kenya's staple food - because of years of drought.

He said the conference should work out ways to help the developing world with special focus on Africa, the poorest continent where millions rely on farming that is under threat from climate changes such as floods and desertification.

He declined to say how much money was needed. Better irrigation systems or drought-resistant crops could help.

A UN report yesterday said Africa was even more vulnerable than feared to climate change, widely blamed on a build-up of gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

RISING SEAS Seventy million people, for instance, could face risks of coastal flooding by 2080 linked to rising seas, up from one million in 1990, it said. More than a quarter of habitats for African wildlife risked destruction.

Negotiators will try to ease disputes over Kyoto - a plan by 35 rich nations to cut emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 -- galvanised by a British report last week warning that inaction could cause a 1930s-style Depression.

President George W Bush, who pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, has shown no sign of dropping his opposition for caps on emissions. Bush favours big investments in new technology, saying Kyoto would threaten jobs and wrongly left out developing nations from first targets to 2012.

''I've certainly got no indication that there is any change in our position, nor is there likely to be any in this presidency,'' US climate negotiator Harlan Watson said.

Reuters SP RN1846