By Alister Doyle and Gabriela Baczynska
POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - Developing countries urged rich nations on Tuesday to provide cash quickly to help them cope with global warming and safeguard tropical forests at 187-nation talks in Poland on a new climate treaty.
The U.N.'s top climate official said the December 1-12 meeting had started well, marking the half-way point in negotiations to agree by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
"We're out of the starting gates," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Sectretariat, said of the meeting of 10,700 delegates which will test governments' willingness to work on climate change amid the economic slowdown.
"I'm happy with where we are," he said.
Developing nations say they need more financial help to combat warming that could bring more droughts, floods, more powerful cyclones and rising seas.
"I think it's really important, especially in the context of the financial crisis, to see how we can craft a Copenhagen agreement that makes it clear how financial resources will be generated," de Boer said.
Several tropical nations, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Surinam and Papua New Guinea, said rich nations had to help them safeguard forests.
Trees soak up greenhouse gases as they grow, and burning forests to clear land for farming accounts for about 20 percent of warming from human activities. Governments have agreed that slowing deforestation will be part of the 2009 deal.
DEFORESTATION
"We must understand how to develop predictable, sufficient and sustainable financial flows" to protect forests, said Kevin Conrad, head of the Papua New Guinea delegation, adding that many countries wanted early action.
"Poznan should give a very strong signal that the developed countries are willing to provide sufficient and rapid financing to southern states," said Li Yan of Greenpeace China. Many developing nations were struggling to sustain economic growth and cut emissions at the same time.
De Boer said that rich nations had to take a lead with deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases. "There was a strong sentiment expressed that governments need to speed up the work and need to really shift gear," he said.
Oxfam proposed on Tuesday that rich countries pay about $50 billion annually from 2013 for rights to emit greenhouse gases, raising cash to help the least developed nations.
"This is a way to get it done," said Heather Coleman, senior climate policy advisor at Oxfam America, adding Norway and the Netherlands supported the concept.
Early on Tuesday 11 Greenpeace activists scaled a 150-meter (490-foot) smokestack at the Patnow power plant in Poland to hang a banner reading "Quit coal, save the climate."
De Boer said that he was not targeting agreement on a complete deal next year, but rather on principles and targets. He denied that he was toning down ambitions.
"I don't think I'm managing expectations, I'm dealing with realities," he said, The existing Kyoto Protocol, binding rich nations to curb emissions, was agreed in 1997 but only entered into force in 2005 after ratification by sufficient countries.
The present round of Kyoto ends in 2012, leaving just three for countries to start implementing what they agree in Copenhagen next year.
