As representatives of 200 nations gather for global climate talks in South Africa, NIWA's principal climate scientist says New Zealand can have a big say in how other countries approach the issue.
The conference in Durban this week is the 17th annual meeting since UN countries agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
Negotiators said there may be a deal struck with a new set of binding targets but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland are likely to sign up.
James Renwick told TV ONE's Breakfast while New Zealand is a relatively small emitter in global terms, its approach to the issue can have a greater influence on others.
"We can play a really big role," he said.
"New Zealand is quite influential internationally, we're seen as forward thinking, we're the clean and green country."
He said the country's position on climate change could have a similar international effect as the ban on nuclear war ships entering New Zealand waters did.
"It doesn't matter whether nuclear ships from the US can come to New Zealand or not, but our stance on that carried a lot of weight internationally and shifted the conversation a bit," he said.
"I think we can play the same sort of game with climate change, how we position ourselves and how we talk about it internationally can carry a lot of weight."
The talks in Durban are being viewed as the last chance to set another round of targets before the first stage of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.
The agreement, formally adopted in December 1997, commits most developed nations to legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions which scientists blame for rising sea levels, intense storms, drought and crop failures.
However, a new legally binding pact may take several years due to deep divisions between rich and poor states.
Poor nations say wealthy countries became rich using coal, oil and gas and that they must be allowed to burn fossil fuels to escape poverty, while rich nations say major developing economies, such as China, India and Brazil, must submit to emissions cuts if the world has any chance of halting dangerous climate change.
High stakes
Two UN reports this month said greenhouse gases had reached record levels in the atmosphere and a warming world would likely bring more floods, stronger cyclones and more intense droughts.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if Governments failed to contain emissions, bringing unprecedented destruction as glaciers melt and sea levels rise.
It said an 80% rise in global energy demand was set to raise carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions by 70% by 2050 and transport emissions were expected to double, due in part to a surge in demand for cars in developing nations.
EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger told a news conference unless progress was made: "(People) will just lose confidence in this travelling circus. How high must the water get in these conference places before the negotiators start deciding?"
Flash flooding from heavy rain killed at least six people in Durban the night before the talks opened.
"It may seem impossible, but you can get it done," Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told delegates.
Pacific Islands' plea
Small island states may disappear under rising seas if an international agreement to tackle climate change is delayed for another decade, an official said.
The European Union is calling for a global deal to be reached by 2015 and implemented by 2020, but the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said that would be too late to reverse rising sea levels that threaten to submerge the vulnerable states.
"We are not going to support this delay that many of the major countries are proposing because it's inconsistent with science," Selwin Hart, the group's chief negotiator on finance said on the sidelines of UN climate talks.
Countries agreed last year in Cancun, Mexico, that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were needed to hold temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
"We have to take action immediately ... if we are going to achieve the below 2 degrees course," Hart said.
Hart urged countries to consider the small states in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Africa and elsewhere that already suffer severe droughts, rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes as a result of climate change.
"At the heart of any agreement should be the principle that no country is expendable. We cannot afford and should not ... it's morally and ethically indefensible to sign an agreement that will result in the demise of a single nation state," he said.
"We are not prepared to sign that kind of agreement. The consequences for some of the islands will be extinction."
He said his group hopes the meeting in Durban, which runs until December 9, would bring the parties together and see the major emitters listen to the plea of the most vulnerable nations.
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