Ministers or their stand-ins at the 189-nation meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are under pressure to spell out their commitments for deepening cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The spotlight is being placed on Brazil, China and India -- big-population developing countries whose carbon pollution has surged in line with their economic growth.

The European Union (EU) hopes these countries will signal they will join rich nations in making binding curbs in their emissions when negotiations start next year to reshape the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012.

The United States, meanwhile, which walked away from Kyoto in 2001, is being closely scrutinised for any gesture towards the pact in the light of last week's US elections, in which the Democrats wrested control of Congress away from President George W. Bush's Republicans.

The United States by itself accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas output, although its position as No. 1 polluter could soon be overtaken by China, a voracious burner of coal.

Greenhouse gases trap the Sun's heat instead of letting it radiate out into space.

As a result, Earth's atmospheric temperature is rising, and many scientists are convinced this is already starting to affect the climate system.

The evidence for this comes through thinner snow cover in the European Alps, shrinkage of the Greenland icesheet and Arctic ice cover, and a retreat in Siberian permafrost.

Experts are demanding swingeing cuts in the pollution to avoid prolonged droughts and floods or melting of the Antarctic icesheet that could unleash an alarming rise in sea levels.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was to make the opening address on Wednesday, followed by speeches by the ministers or delegation chiefs.

The Nairobi conference, which began on November 6, yielded its first significant progress on Tuesday with deals on technical aspects of Kyoto's complex machinery.

They reached agreement on how a fund to help poor countries adapt to global warming will be managed, and on a five-year work programme to identify areas in rich and poor countries alike that could be vulnerable to climate change.

In addition, they agreed rules for defining which projects should be eligible under Kyoto's "Joint Implementation" (JI) initiative. JI is a scheme by which rich countries that transfer clean technology to former Soviet eastern European countries can gain carbon credits that they can trade or offset against their own emissions goal.

Financial experts on Tuesday warned climate change could so amplify the effect of weather disasters that droughts, storm surges and other natural catastrophes could cost as much as a thousand billion dollars in a single year by 2040.

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