The European Union will provide 369 million dollars, the sources said.

The rest has been pledged by Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, they said, adding they did not have details as to how the remainder was being shared out.

The money was promised in July 2001 at a key point in negotiations to complete the Kyoto Protocol on global warming after the accord had been badly mauled by a US walkout.

The Protocol is the biggest coordinated effort to combat rising atmospheric temperatures, stoked mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, that scientists say could disrupt Earth's delicate climate system.

It requires industrialised signatories to reduce emissions of "greenhouse" gases by 2008-2012 compared to the levels that prevailed in 1990.

But the pact was crippled by the abandonment by the United States, the biggest single global polluter and even though its complex rulebook has been approved, its future is in doubt.

It will now only take effect if it is ratified by Russia, which has been ambiguous for months as to whether it will take this step.

In a separate development at the conference here, a pair of British glaciologists warned that the world's polar icecaps, the Greenland icesheet and glaciers were melting fast.

"In the Arctic, Greenland, West Antarctic and in glaciers globally, ice and snow levels are generally in retreat, and the scientific consensus that average global temperatures will continue to increase over the next century means that the risk to these already climatically sensitive areas is increasing," said Bristol University specialist Jonathan Bamber.

Bamber and colleague Anthony Payne, also of Bristol University, who spoke at a press conference hosted by Greenpeace, are editors of an upcoming book written by 23 scientists on the state of the "cryosphere" -- the mass of frozen water in the world.

Climate experts say the cryosphere is a little understood but undoubtedly significant cog in the machinery that drives global warming.

Because they are white, ice and snow reflect back light and thus heat from the Sun. If they melt, that leaves dark patches of land and sea which absorb sunlight, and so the global temperature rises further.

Another worry is that a big melting of Arctic ice could send a surge of sluggish cold water into the North Atlantic, acting like a brake on the Gulf Stream, the circulation of warm water that provides northwestern Europe with its balmy climate.

The press conference took place on the sidelines of a conference of 180 countries which are members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty of the Kyoto Protocol. The 12-day conference runs until December 12.

SPACE.WIRE