A new legally binding global deal on climate change should be delayed until 2015, said Australia and Norway in a joint submission to the United Nations.

The proposal comes ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Durban, South Africa in December. Summits in Denmark and Mexico in 2009 and 2010, respectively, failed to produce a legally binding climate treaty.

The Australia-Norway submission calls for a new timetable to finalize an international treaty that would extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2015. Kyoto, which requires nearly 40 developed nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5.2 percent less than 1990 levels by 2020 during the years 2008-12, is scheduled to expire in 2012.

Todd Stern, U.S. President Barack Obama's chief climate change negotiator, warned that the future of the 1997 treaty could be a major stumbling block in Durban, The Guardian newspaper reported Monday.

The 2015 timetable is intended to "scale-up" international efforts on climate change to attain a global goal of limiting temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius, the Australia-Norway proposal said.

"A stepwise approach from Durban to 2015 will provide time and space for countries to build confidence and capacity, and ensure a robust outcome over time," it states.

The joint submission says that while all countries should quantify their expected emissions outcomes, developed countries will be "held accountable" to the emissions outcome of their targets and developing countries would "only be bound to implement their actions, not the specific emissions outcome."

The proposal represents a change in focus stemming from the disappointment of Copenhagen and the uncertain outcome of Durban, said Australia's Climate Institute Deputy Chief Executive Erwin Jackson, the Climate Spectator reports.

"We are in a transitional phase where domestic action is leading international negotiations," he said. "Before, it was the other way around."

The Australia-Norway joint submission to the United Nations "reinforces Australia's view that a legal agreement with binding commitments from all major economies provides the strongest basis for global action to tackle climate change," The Australian newspaper quoted a spokesman for Australian Climate Change Minister Greg Combet as saying.

Existing commitments under the Kyoto Protocol end in December 2012 and Australia supports a binding agreement of all major emitters as soon as practicable after that.

Combet said Australia has proposed a number of actions counties could take in the international negotiations from 2011 to 2015 toward building an ambitious and legally binding mitigation framework.

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