NAIROBI, Kenya — The 168 members of the United Nations’ pact for cutting greenhouse gases will launch negotiations in 2008 over the next round of pledges for tackling global warming, a worldwide conference on climate change decided overnight. The negotiations will determine action for curbing carbon pollution from 2013 to 2017, after Kyoto’s present commitment period expires in 2012. But no date is set for concluding the negotiation process, nor are there any pre-conditions for the talks. Experts say Kyoto’s so-called second commitment period must deliver swingeing reductions in emissions to avoid potentially crippling damage to the world’s climate system by fossil-fuel gases. The 2008 negotiations are officially a ‘review’ of the Kyoto Protocol — a broad assessment of what changes should be made for the treaty’s next commitment period. Any changes will then have to be negotiated in full and subsequently ratified. Agreement came after the 12-day marathon talks in Nairobi under the 189-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) went hours into overtime. Developing countries had feared that any preconditions for the review meant they would be forced into accepting binding curbs on their pollution — a requirement that would […]