China’s leading climate representative at the UN talks in Durban, Su Wei, said that while the country is open to negotiations,  EU conditions for signing up to a second Kyoto Protocol commitment period are “not fair” for developing countries, China Daily reported. The EU has said it will only extend emissions-reduction targets beyond 2012 if there is a timetable for negotiating a single legally binding instrument joined by China and the US after 2020.

Accusing the EU of shifting the goalposts, Su said the new conditions are “already beyond the mandate agreed” in Bali in 2007, China Daily noted. China and India, as developing countries, are not obliged to meet the binding Kyoto target for industrialised countries, and the US never ratified the accord. Japan, Canada and Russia have all rejected an extension.

China is likely to agree to a quantified target to limit its greenhouse-gas emissions after 2020, according to a senior Chinese expert quoted by China Daily. But any such action depends on the outcome of climate-change negotiations and China’s level of development by that time, said Xu Huaqing, a researcher with the Energy Research Institute.

Climate experts gathered on the sidelines of the Durban conference to discuss China’s climate-change adaptation strategy and to exchange lessons learned from multinational cooperation, China.org said.

Health ministry officials rebuffed accusations that the Chinese dairy industry exercised undue influence in the drafting of new minimum standards for milk production, People’s Daily reported. While critics contend that the standards are too weak, the ministry said the 70-member drafting panel was not “kidnapped” by milk producers.

Jiang Jufeng, governor of Sichuan province, said China has spent 4.7 billion yuan (US$738 million) on controlling water and soil erosion around the Yangtze River over the past five years, according to China Daily. He noted that the country still faces tough challenges as nearly 500,000 square kilometres of land have sustained water and soil losses.

China plans to introduce a special value-added tax for the rare-earth sector to further crack down on the illegal mining and over-exploration of the elements, Xinhua cited an industry and information technology ministry official as saying. Jia Yinsong noted that over-exploration causes great damage to the environment.

In an Asian first, Taiwan will prohibit fishermen from shark finning at sea beginning in 2012, Al Jazeera reported. While the new law does not stop the catching of sharks, it makes it illegal to take the fish back to port in pieces. The practice of cutting off sharks’ fins and throwing the bodies back into the sea has been blamed for a steep decline in shark numbers.

The Chinese billionaire Huang Nubo was refused permission to buy 300 square kilometres of land in Iceland to build a resort development, Bloomberg News said. Iceland’s internal affairs ministry said Huang’s investment group did not meet legal requirements for acquiring the land.