Nepal is expecting that the coming round of climate change meeting can produce some significant progress.

“Nepal is expecting that the Cancun conference will agree on financial parts needed for the adaptation in the least developed countries,” said Dr. Ganesh Raj Joshi, secretary to the Ministry of Environment.

“Nepal’s priority is in finance, technology transfer and adaptation,” secretary Joshi told New Spotlight. “On December 4, Nepal will host the meeting for Mountain Alliance as a side event.”

Minister of Environment Thakur Prasad Sharma will lead the Nepalese delegation in the Cancun meeting. Nepal will be represented by NGOs, media persons and officials from the Ministry Environment.

A senior UN official is also expecting that the next round of climate-change talks, beginning Nov. 29 in Cancun, Mexico, can produce “significant” progress on forest protection, aid for developing nations and technology sharing.

“There are enough issues that are close to resolution that an important outcome could be achieved,” UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr told reporters in New York. “It is our assessment that significant progress is possible.”

Orr, director of policy planning for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said that, while “expectations for Copenhagen were huge, we are at a different point today.” As no broad-based accord will be reached, the “order of the day is pragmatism” and negotiators should “make progress where we can on the issues we can,” he said.

Talks since Copenhagen on forest protection, climate aid and technology sharing have left those issues “ripe” for agreement in Cancun, Orr said. “We encourage all parties to push the last few inches across the finish line.”

The UN is seeking a “set of understandings on cooperation” to curb destruction of forests, which accounts for 20 percent of manmade carbon dioxide emissions, Orr said.

Laurence Graff, head of international relations unit at the European Commission’s climate department, also said last month that agreement in those three areas is “within reach” at Cancun. “We need to be ambitious but realistic and manage expectations so that we can lay the ground for action and provide a good milestone for an international
regime that would be finalized later,” he said.

Almost 200 nations will try to forge a deal to limit greenhouse gases blamed for climate change that eluded last year’s meeting in Copenhagen. They failed to reach a binding agreement to set a framework for greenhouse-gas reduction when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Instead, the Copenhagen meeting yielded a political accord calling for $100 billion a year by 2020 to fund climate efforts in poorer nations.

The countries also vowed to stop global temperature increases at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than in pre-industrial times.