BONN (Reuters) - U.N.-led climate talks kick off on Monday in Germany with experts trying to forge a global warming pact facing a new challenge from critics who say climate change measures are partly to blame for higher food and energy prices.
The meeting is the second of eight which aim to secure aglobal climate deal by the end of next year, to come into forceafter the first round of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
The Bonn talks focus on the "toolkit" of steps which cancurb rising emissions of greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide,which scientists say risk catastrophic climate change.
Senior officials from more than 160 countries face thedifficulty, however, that many such measures -- includingcarbon taxes and emissions trading -- deliberately raise energycosts by penalising carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
They are controversial options as record oil prices hitmotorists and electricity consumers worldwide.
Meanwhile carbon-cutting biofuels have helped drive up foodprices by using food crops to make an ethanol alternative togasoline.
The United Nations' climate change chief Yvo de Boercautioned on Sunday against blaming biofuels too much.
"While growing crops for biofuels has some influence onfood prices, clearly other factors like increasing wheatconsumption and hoarding of rice also play a significant role,"he told Reuters.
The Bonn meeting, which ends on June 13, follows one inBangkok in March-April which produced little of substance tocontribute to a new deal.
"The challenge is now to move ahead and start identifyingwhat could be written into the 2009 agreement," added de Boer,who is head of the U.N. climate change body (UNFCCC).
Another U.N. agency, the Food and AgriculturalOrganisation, hosts a summit this week in Rome to discussrecord food prices.
Kyoto caps the greenhouse gases of some 37 industrialisedcountries, but neither of the world's top two emitters -- theUnited States and China.
