Climate negotiators gathered in China today to hammer out an understanding over a draft negotiation text and try to give a push to the gridlocked talks ahead of the all important Cancun summit later this year.
About 3,000 delegates from India and host of other countries and agencies under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol are attending the meeting in China's northern Tianjin city.
The talks that kicked off today are part of long-running efforts through the United Nations to secure a post-2012 treaty on tackling global warming.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is expected to attend it towards the end of the five-day meeting.
With the climate talks making little headway since the acrimonious summit in Copenhagen last year, UN's top climate official asked the warring nations to rise to the challenge of finding common ground.
The talks in China are the last meeting of negotiators before the crucial UN climate summit in Mexico later this year.
"Now is the time to rise to your challenge... Now is the time to accelerate the search for common ground," UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres said in an address.
The officials would discuss the negotiating text reached at the Bonn talks in August by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention.
A draft proposal, by the Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol, will also be tabled for discussion.
The two working groups have held three rounds of talks this year without any major success.
This will be the last meeting before Cancun summit, and India, China and other developing countries are not too optimistic about reaching an agreement on emission cuts with developed countries.
Last year's summit in Copenhagen, which was projected as a make-or-break meeting, ended without producing a legally binding deal to curb global climate change.
It is to be seen whether the India-China rapport displayed at Copenhagen which successfully withstood pressure mounted by developed countries to impose legally-binding cuts would continue.
Figueres played down expectations of a binding deal being struck at the Cancun summit due to persisting differences.
"Let me be clear - there is no magic bullet, no one climate agreement that will solve everything right now... To expect that is naive," she said in a statement ahead of the talks.
