NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Australia's new prime minister handed over documents ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations in Bali on Wednesday and said his own country was already suffering from global warming.
Kevin Rudd handed the documents to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of climate talks on the Indonesian island, where 190 nations are trying to initiate two-year talks on a global pact to fight a warming planet.
"For Australians, climate change is no longer a distant threat," Rudd told delegates at the opening of the conference's main session.
"Our rivers are dying, bushfires are more ferocious and more frequent and our natural wonders -- the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, our rainforests -- are now at risk."
Rudd, whose Labor Party won a landslide election victory last month, signed the pact last week as his first official act, leaving the United States as the only major developed nation outside the pact to fight climate change.
Nations are meeting in Bali to discuss terms for starting formal negotiations to expand or replace the 10-year-old Kyoto Protocol.
Rudd described climate change as one of humanity's greatest moral and economic challenges. "Australia now stands ready to assume its responsibility in responding to this challenge -- both at home and in the negotiations that lie ahead across the community of nations."Continue to read at Reuters
