The World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) yesterday called on developed countries to take the lead and greater responsibility in emission reductions.

A press release of the WWF during the two-week UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, said yesterday that financial resources will have to be provided by the international community to help developing countries adapt to the damaging effects of climate change.

"The devastating impacts of climate change reach across the globe, but in the near-term those most at risk, and least responsible, are developing countries," said Hans Verolme, director of the WWF's Global Climate Change Program.

"It's the flood-prone mega-deltas, such as Bangladesh, and drought-prone parts of Africa and Asia that are most at risk right now -- the Bali Summit gives world leaders' small window of opportunity to respond and agree to set deeper cuts in CO2 emission," he said.

As delegates make their way to the UN climate change conference on the tropical island paradise of Bali, they must not let the surroundings fool them. Paradise is under threat from rising sea levels, warming oceans and increases in extreme weather events, the press release said.

The past year has seen more weather records smashed as extreme events take a firmer hold of the planet, according to the WWF.

The overview from the global conservation organization, Breaking Records in 2007 Climate Change, shows record lows for sea ice cover in the Arctic, some of the worst forest fires ever seen and record floods, said the WWF.

"Events like these show the urgent need to take decisive action on climate change," said the director.

"Keeping warming below a 2 degrees centigrade global average is key to preventing dangerous extreme events such as these which punctuated 2007," he said.

Over the past year, overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming, set out in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), put the reality of human-induced global warming beyond any reasonable doubt.

Established in 1961, the WWF operates in more than 100 countries working for a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.

The Bali UN climate change conference, which kicked off on Monday, is tasked with drawing up a roadmap for negotiations for anew climate change regime as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012.

The meeting, which will end on Dec. 14, was attended by 10,000 representatives from over 180 countries and non-governmental organizations.