UN Ghana climate talks begin, but time is running out

"The clock is ticking," Ghanaian President John Kufuor told the opening session of the August 21-27 talks in Accra, meant to work on details of a new U.N. deal to combat global warming that will be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

"We need more than rhetoric to make progress in the next 12 to 18 months," he told about 1,000 delegates in a conference hall in Accra. The talks are the third this year of a series of eight U.N. sessions due to end with a treaty in Copenhagen.

Kufuor said there were damaging signs of climate change in Ghana -- rainfall had decreased by 20 percent in the past 30 years, while up to 1,000 square km (386.1 sq mile) of land was at risk in the Volta Delta due to sea level rises and floods.

"Climate change makes development harder and more expensive," he said.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, also urged delegates to speed up talks after scant progress in previous meetings in Bangkok and Bonn this year against a backdrop of slowing economic growth and high food and fuel prices.

"Time is short ... negotiations need to speed up," he said. He said Africa had been the "forgotten continent" in the climate debate and among the most vulnerable, with up to 250 million people threatened by water shortages by 2020.