MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

LatAm ?very vulnerable to extreme weather events'

A report on ecological damage from greenhouse gases dominated a UN conference on global warming yesterday in Bs. Aires as delegates from nearly 200 nations began to assemble for meetings next week on the launch of the Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto, a landmark global warming treaty to be implemented in February, commits major industrialized nations to curbing gases from factories, cars and coal-burning power plants blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Experts warned yesterday that Latin America was especially hard hit by the so-called ??greenhouse effect'' as carbon dioxide and other gases were blamed for abrupt climate changes in a region of more than 300 million people.

Although Latin America accounts for only about 4.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a preliminary report prepared by officials from several countries pointed to signs of recent altered weather patterns, including an increase in flooding and droughts in Central and South America.

??The region is very vulnerable to extreme weather events,'' said Fernando Tudela Abad, an official in the Mexican government's Environmental Ministry.

The report, titled Climate Change in Latin America: Challenges and Opportunities cited energy production and transportation emissions as accounting for most of the region's output of greenhouse gases ? which rank behind the US, Europe and Asia and ahead of Africa.

Emissions from oil production were particularly high in small oil-producing islands in the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, along with Venezuela, one of the world's leading petroleum exporters. Paraguay topped the list in transportation emissions, with nearly 90 percent of the country's emissions coming from buses and cars.

Also yesterday, the top European Union negotiator urged participating countries to move quickly to launch formal talks on laying out new targets for cutting greenhouse gases after 2012.

The talks would serve as informal forums to begin discussing emissions cuts and other steps beyond the timetable of the Kyoto Protocol.

Some at the conference have expressed hope that the US and large developing nations such as China and India might be more willing to curb emissions or take other steps to slow global warming beyond 2012.

But EU climate negotiating chief Yov de Boer said some developing countries expressed concerns about how emissions targets might affect economic growth. ??Developing countries are putting very legitimate demands on the table ... putting their own economic growth at the top of the agenda and making eradication of poverty an overriding concern,'' De Boer said. But he said the push for future emissions cuts would accelerate on Monday when the main session of government policy-makers opens here.