HYDERABAD - The co-head of the UN climate-change panel that shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize said yesterday he was pessimistic about progress at next month's global environmental summit in Bali.

HYDERABAD - The co-head of the UN climate-change panel that shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize said yesterday he was pessimistic about progress at next month's global environmental summit in Bali.

The world might have to wait until the Copenhagen summit two years hence before governments summon the political will to budge, said Martin Parry, co-chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), regarded as the world's top scientific authority on global warming and its impact.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali aims to get countries to agree on launching a road map for negotiating cuts in carbon emissions from 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol run out.

"I'm not an optimist," Parry said in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, where he is attending a conference on the impact of climate change on the world's crops. - Sapa