Pacific islands are trying low-cost ways to protect crops and coasts from cyclones that are a bigger threat -- for now -- than rising sea levels that could wipe low-lying nations off the map.

Japan should shun a "politically inexplicable" option of a rise in greenhouse gas emissions when it sets a 2020 target in coming days, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Wednesday.

Small Pacific islands vulnerable to rising sea levels won a symbolic victory at the United Nations on Wednesday with the passage of a resolution recognizing climate change as a possible threat to security.

A Mexican proposal to raise billions of dollars to fight climate change is winning backing in talks on a new U.N. treaty, paradoxically because no one really likes it, a Mexican official said on Wednesday.

Rich and poor countries criticized a first draft text of a new United Nations climate treaty Monday but grudgingly accepted it as the basis for six months of arduous negotiations.

Warm weather in 2007 helped the European Union towards its target of cutting global warming gases under the UN Kyoto Protocol for fighting climate change, but Spain, Italy and Ireland remained way off track.

Soaring transport emissions also offset many of the advances made by the 27-nation bloc, EU data showed on Friday, confirming a Reuters story last month.

Rich nations as a group are unlikely to reach the deep 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions urged by developing nations as part of a new UN climate treaty, the top US climate envoy said on Friday.