LONDON - The EU could yet table a proposal that would throw the beleaguered Kyoto Protocol a lifeline and secure the future of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) beyond 2012, government negotiators and observers have told Point Carbon News.
Officials from the bloc's member states will in the next few weeks discuss whether to formally back a plan to extend the life of the 1997 climate treaty, on condition it would expire in 2018 and be replaced with a single global pact that includes capping all major nations' emissions.
If all 27 countries agree, the EU could announce the plan at U.N. climate talks in South Africa in November as part of an attempt to overcome the four-year impasse over Kyoto's future and how to tackle the long-term problem of climate change.