Climate talks close to compensation agreement An international process for addressing loss and damage caused by climate change is on the brink of being launched at today's marathon UN climate meeting, in a historic turning point for the 17-year-old talks. A proposal to set up the new mechanism at next year's talks in Warsaw has made its way into the final negotiating text of the two-week talks in the Qatari capital of Doha. The talks were supposed to end on Friday but were showing no signs of finishing on Saturday afternoon. A number of sticking points were still holding up the meeting, which left exhausted delegates sprawled asleep around the city's massive convention centre. The stumbling blocks include the rules governing a second phase of the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the only treaty currently obliging some wealthy countries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, and the amount of climate aid developed countries will provide in the next three years. It appears countries have traded a firm pledge for more aid in return for getting what many said was a landmark agreement on loss and damage into the final leg of the negotiations. "This is a historic decision because it ends a 20-year discussion on if and how loss and damage from climate change will be addressed," said Farhana Yamin, a veteran adviser at the global climate negotiations, which sprang from a treaty adopted at the 1992 Rio earth summit and began in 1995. Nick Mabey of the E3G environmental think tank said: "It's a structural change to the international climate negotiations to have the costs of a lack of action on climate change being directly included in the overall negotiations." "This finally puts the climate change bill on to the table at the UN talks," said Ruth Davis of Greenpeace. Small island states and other countries especially vulnerable to the impact of global warming have been pushing for such a measure for years. But the concept has always been deemed too contentious because the US and other big western countries feared it could end up exposing them to unlimited compensation payments. In addition, although there is emerging research attributing specific heatwaves or floods to climate change, scientists have long said it is impossible to blame global warming for any specific bout of extreme weather. But people close to the negotiations said the US appeared to be supporting the plan because the way it was drafted meant payments by wealthy countries would be capped at $100bn a year - the amount they have already promised to mobilise by 2020. In addition, the debate has sharpened as countries continue to dither over curbing their emissions in the annual UN climate talks despite what some say is growing evidence of climate change. As recently as four years ago, the debate was focused on how much to cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, and how society could adapt to global warming, said Sam Bickersteth of the Climate & Knowledge Development Network. Now, the most vulnerable countries are discussing the "once unimaginable" concept of covering the human cost of dealing with the losses caused when efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change fail, he said. So far, the talks have produced the Kyoto protocol and, under an agreement forged at last year's negotiations in Durban, South Africa, a new deal to be agreed by 2015 and enter force by 2020 that obliges all countries, rich and poor, to address global warming. This year's talks were supposed to tie up loose ends from past meetings so the discussions could start in earnest on the 2015 deal. But as the Doha meeting dragged on, it was still unclear exactly what they would produce.