"Climate change is happening and accelerating," Lars Muller, a specialist in the EU environment directorate, said as the 12th conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) entered its second day in Nairobi.

"Impacts are projected to become dangerous and large-scale if the global temperature rises further than two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level," Muller told reporters.

Scientists say the earth's temperature has already risen 0.7 degrees Celsius since 1900 and without immediate steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions it will continue to rise.

By limiting the average global temperature rise to two degrees and stabilizing gas emissions, which have come down by 14 percent since efforts began to curb them in the EU, nations could curb the serious social and economic impacts already being felt.

Muller urged others to match the EU progress.

"The EU cannot solve climate change on its own even if we wanted to," Muller said, noting that Europe was not the only continent that had a stake in fixing the problem.

Last year's Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in the Americas caused more than 150 billion euros (190 billion dollars) in economic damage while flooding in Europe in 2002 cost nearly 15 billion euros (19 billion dollars), according to the EU.

Delegates to the conference are focusing on looking to the future after the Kyoto Protocol, an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions that lead to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming, expires in 2012.

Kyoto came into effect in February 2005 with intentions to commit industrialized countries to bringing their greenhouse gas emissions to an average of five percent below their 1990 level, by a deadline of 2012.

But industrialized giants like the United States, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia, the biggest polluter on a per capita basis, have both refused to ratify the treaty, citing damage to their economy.

And large and rapidly developing other nations like China, the world's second biggest polluter, India and Brazil -- so-called "non-annexed 1 countries" in the treaty's parlance -- are not covered by Kyoto.

On Tuesday, Russia presented an initiative to make it easier for such countries to achieve the treaty's goals, according to Outi Berghall, the chief negotiator for the EU at the Nairobi conference.

"There is a Russian initiative that has been proposed (under which) "it should be possible for 'non-annexed 1 countries' to take commitments on a voluntary basis," Berghall told reporters.

Details of the initiative, to be debated over the coming two weeks at the conference, were not immediately clear.