New Delhi: In climate talks beginning on Monday in Bonn, India will oppose the EU’s move to start negotiations on the draft of a new climate protocol in 2012 itself. Considering it another shift in the goalpost by the Europeans, the Indian team of negotiators is expected to point out that no consensus was built at Durban last year that the only way forward is a new protocol that renders Kyoto Protocol redundant.

Australia and New Zealand have missed a deadline to set post-2012 emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol, with both governments saying they will decide whether to continue to be legally bound to cut emissions of seven greenhouse gases later this year.

Countries intending to sign up to a second round of targets under the 1997 treaty were scheduled to notify the U.N. by Tuesday.

But Australia and New Zealand, both of which plan to launch emissions trading schemes and have been tipped to take on fresh legal targets from 2013, failed to meet that deadline.

The ongoing rapid industrialization of the world's advanced developing economies means global emissions of heat-trapping gases will by the end of the decade exceed safe levels by far more than previously expected, according to a report published Friday.

The report from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency said global greenhouse gas output will be at least 50.9 billion tones of CO2 equivalent a year by 2020, 2.5 billion higher than it estimated in 2010, and some 7-11 billion tones beyond levels needed to prevent runaway climate change.

Speaking at an international workshop on Equity and Climate Change, held on April 12, the minister for environment and forests, Jayanthi Natarajan, sought to build a consensus on the inter-relationship between equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in the Climate Convention, and the nature of the obligations they entail in the new arrangement that is to be negotiated. By focusing on a technical definition of equity the approach continues to be to tweak a failing system arrived at in 1992 rather than develop a global vision for 2032.

Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday slammed the European Union for its decision to levy tax on international flights and even termed the 27-nation bloc’s step as “a deal breaker” in the context of ongoing climate talks. “For the Environment Ministry, it is a deal breaker. I don’t know what the Civil Aviation Ministry is saying. For me, it is a deal breaker,” Natarajan said at a function here.

After the differences at Durban over carbon reduction, India has an opportunity to mend fences with the least developed countries. New Delhi can lend support to the detailed plan for increased emission reduction by developed countries put forward by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Africa Group in their submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.