U.N. climate panel to meet, add pressure for action

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - About 130 governments meet in Spain next week to agree a stark guide to the mounting risks of climate change that the United Nations says will leave no option but tougher action to fix the problem.

The U.N. climate panel, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, will meet in Valencia from November 12-17 to condense 3,000 pages of already published science into a 20-page summary for policy makers.

A draft blames human activities for rising temperatures and says deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed to avert ever more heatwaves, melting glaciers and rising seas.

"There is no reason to question the science any longer," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, who said states should act "in the collective interest of humanity."

"Valencia will add further momentum in the mind of the public around the world that governments ... have no option but to move forward" with tougher policies, he told Reuters on Friday by telephone from Lisbon.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comprises both government officials and scientists who will edit and agree a text that draws on work by 2,500 experts to give the most authoritative U.N. overview of global warming since 2001.

He said the world's environment ministers should approve a two-year timetable to work out a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main U.N. plan to curb warming until 2012, when they meet on the Indonesian island of Bali next month.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the final day of the IPCC talks in Valencia.