Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations talks that began today to devise a new global-warming treaty for limiting carbon- dioxide emissions probably won’t yield concrete results, German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said.

Delegates from 190 nations are meeting in Poznan, Poland, to negotiate a new treaty to curb climate change. Proposals for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol treaty will be debated at the conference, which runs Dec. 1-12, with a final agreement planned to be signed in Copenhagen a year from now.

“Many countries will hold back from making commitments because there is still a year to go before a final agreement must be reached,” he said today at a briefing in Berlin.

Delegates at the UN-sponsored talks need to establish a plan that will see global emissions peak by 2015 and drop “dramatically” afterward, Greenpeace proposed today in an e- mailed statement at the start of the conference.

Without an agreement, “literally millions of lives are at risk, along with devastating economic consequences and species extinction,” Greenpeace added.

The 27-member European Union is probably the only region that will make a legally binding target on cutting CO2 output that will coincide with the Poznan conference, Gabriel said.

EU leaders plan to meet in Brussels next week to hammer out details of a proposal that will cut emissions of the greenhouse gas by 20 percent by 2020.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 1, 2008 07:48 EST