BEIJING - China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday Canada's decision to quit the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions was "regrettable" and called on the country to continue abiding by its commitments on climate change.

On Monday, Canada became the first country to announce it would withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Canada, a major energy producer, has long complained that the agreement is unworkable because it excludes many significant emitters from binding action.

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The United Nations climate conference reached an agreement Sunday on a new program that was meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change in the coming decades.

• Story: Nations agree on landmark deal to fight climate change, aid poor countries

China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, has long insisted the Kyoto Protocol remain a foundation of international efforts to curb these emissions causing global warming.

"It is regrettable and flies in the face of the efforts of the international community for Canada to leave the Kyoto Protocol at a time when the Durban meeting, as everyone knows, made important progress by securing a second phase of commitment to the Protocol," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a news briefing.

"We also hope that Canada will face up to its due responsibilities and duties, and continue abiding by its commitments, and take a positive, constructive attitude towards participating in international cooperation to respond to climate change."

China's state news agency, Xinhua, denounced Canada's decision.

"Canada's so-called reason for dropping out of the agreement is preposterous and completely an excuse to shirk responsibility," Xinhua said.

The commentary urged Canada to "retract its decision and return to the Kyoto Protocol, so that it can make positive contribution to the cause of global emissions reductions."

Legally binding emissions reductions
At recently concluded climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa, China won an extension of the protocol until 2017, but also bowed to pressure to launch later talks for a new pact that would legally oblige all the big emitters to take action.

Under Kyoto, poorer countries including China, take voluntary, non-binding steps to curb the growth of emissions while they focus on economic development, and rich nations must sign up to quantitative cuts in emissions.

The United States has refused to join the protocol and argued that China and other big emerging emitters should come under a legally binding framework that does away with the either-or distinction between advanced and developing countries.

The protocol, initially adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, is aimed at fighting global warming. Canada's previous Liberal government signed the accord but did little to implement it and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government never embraced it.

"The Kyoto Protocol does not cover the world's largest two emitters, United States and China, and therefore cannot work," Kent said on Monday. "It's now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it's an impediment."

Canada's exit no surprise
Monday's announcement was not a surprise. Canada faced international criticism at the recent climate talks in South Africa amid reports it would pull out of Kyoto. Kent had said previously that signing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change was one of the previous government's biggest blunders.

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The accord requires countries to give a year's notice to withdraw. Kent said the move saves Canada $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its Kyoto targets.

"To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of either removing every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle of every kind from Canadian roads or closing down the entire farming and agriculture sector and cutting heat to every home, office, hospital, factory and building in Canada," Kent said.

Harper's Conservative government is reluctant to hurt Canada's booming oil sands sector, which is the country's fastest growing source of greenhouse gases and a reason it has reneged on its Kyoto commitments.

Canada has the world's third-largest oil reserves, more than 170 billion barrels. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more reserves. But critics say the enormous amount of energy and water needed in the extraction process increases greenhouse gas emissions.

Abdication of responsibility?
Kent's announcement drew immediate criticism from environmental groups. Mike Hudema of Greenpeace Canada said in a statement that it is further signal that the Harper government is more concerned about protecting polluters than people.

Hannah McKinnon of the Climate Action Network Canada said formally withdrawing from Kyoto after the Durban, South Africa conference is a slap in the face of the international community.

"It's a total abdication of our responsibilities," McKinnon said.

Opposition New Democrat lawmaker Megan Leslie disputed the dollar figures involved and said there are no penalties under Kyoto. Leslie said pulling out saves the Conservatives from having to report that Canada is falling short of its Kyoto targets.

"It's like we're the kid in school who knows they're gonna fail the class, so we have to drop it before that actually happens," Leslie said.

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Scientists say that if levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise, eventually the world's climate will reach a tipping point, with irreversible melting of some ice sheets and a several-foot rise in sea levels.

They cannot pinpoint exactly when that would happen, but the two-decade-long climate negotiations have been focused on preventing global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above current levels by the end of this century.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated: 2:55 p.m. ET

DURBAN, South Africa -- Developing states most at risk from global warming rebelled against a proposed deal at U.N. climate talks Friday, forcing host South Africa to draw up new draft documents in a bid to prevent the talks from collapsing.

South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane suspended the talks in Durban after a coalition of island nations, developing states and the European Union complained the current draft lacked ambition, sources said.

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"There was a strong appeal from developing countries, saying the commitments in the proposed texts were not enough, both under the Kyoto Protocol and for other countries," said Norway's Climate Change Minister Erik Solheim.

Canada's Environment Minister Peter Kent told Reuters there was "serious negotiating to do" if the conference was to wrap up as planned Friday.

Updated: 12 p.m. ET

DURBAN, South Africa -- The United States, China and India could scuttle attempts to save the Kyoto climate treaty, Europe's top negotiator said Friday.

"Durban is holding its breath: Will China, India and the U.S. accept to be legally bound?" asked EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard as a Friday deadline neared.

Both China and the U.S. have said they would be amenable to the EU proposal to negotiate a post-2020 agreement, but each attached riders that appeared to hobble prospects for unanimous acceptance. India, which lags behind China in development even though its economy is expanding rapidly, was taking "a relatively tough stand here," Hedegaard said.

The United States, whose Congress is generally seen as hostile on the climate issue, is concerned about conceding any competitive business advantage to China. Beijing, too, is resisting the notion that it has become a developed country on par with the U.S. or Europe, saying it still has hundreds of millions of impoverished people.

Under Kyoto, rich countries are legally bound to reduce carbon emissions while developing countries take voluntary actions.

Updated: 5 a.m. ET

DURBAN, South Africa -- Rich and poor nations at climate change talks are lining up behind a European Union plan for achieving a global pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, but delegates said time was running out to reach a deal before talks end on Friday.

Ministers made incremental progress overnight toward a deal that many envoys see as being a political agreement, with states promising to start talks on a new regime of binding cuts in the gases blamed for global warming and environmental devastation.

They say that anything less would mean the two-week-long, United Nations negotiations in the South African city of Durban were a disaster, Reuters reported.

"Time in Durban is now really short," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told reporters after talks that stretched into the early hours of Friday morning.

"The success or failure of Durban hangs on a small number of countries who have not yet committed to the (EU) roadmap and the meaningful content it must have. We need to get them on board today. We do not have too many hours left," she said.

The slow pace of dealing with the problem is dispiriting delegates from small islands on the edge of survival, and from activists impatient with the familiar posturing of climate negotiations.

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"Waiting is going to be a disaster for us," said Samuela Alivereti Saumatua, Fiji's environment minister, who said the Pacific island this month relocated its first coastal village because of climate-related flooding and unseasonable cyclones.

"We have cyclones now at any time of the year. We have flash floods in the coastal areas. Water supply is being salinated. Food security is going to be a problem. We are desperately looking at how we will deal with the situation," he told reporters.

'Got to decide'
The EU plan envisages a new deal reached by 2015, and put into effect by 2020, imposing binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases.

"We're reaching the point where a number of delegations have got to decide whether they want to get a treaty with real environmental integrity," Britain's climate envoy Chris Huhne told reporters.

"It's increasingly clear that the EU is speaking for the vast majority of participants," Huhne said.

Two major issues for the negotiators from nearly 200 countries are finding a way of updating the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts, and raising funding needed to help poor countries tackle climate change.

Key to any greenhouse gas deal will be China, the United States, India and Brazil -- the world's largest emitters which are not bound by the cuts regime in the Kyoto Protocol.

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Three U.N. reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction.

South African President Jacob Zuma has said Durban will be a failure if a Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor nations tackle global warming and nudge them toward a new global effort to fight climate change, is not put into force.

A group of 48 of the least developed countries has said it backs the European plan for a firm timetable, joining 43 small island states. Japan has said it shares "common ground" with Europe while Canada and several other developed countries have shown their support.

US student thrown out
The EU, Japan and others have said that any deal that does not include all major players would not nearly be enough to head off a global problem.

The United States has said it will make its emissions cuts binding under an international agreement only if China and other developing countries that are big polluters back their commitments with equal legal force.

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If the discussions hold to form, envoys will extend discussions and release their decisions on Saturday.

An American college student was ejected from the conference Thursday after disrupting a speech by U.S. delegate Todd Stern. Police escorted the student, Abigail Borah, 21, from the cavernous plenary of the conference as delegates applauded her removal.

Before she was seized, Borah began reading a speech accusing the U.S. of stonewalling an agreement, but Stern denied that.

"I've heard this from everywhere from ministers to press reports to the very sincere and passionate young woman who was in the hall when I was giving my remarks. I just wanted to be on the record as saying that, that's just a mistake. It is not true," he told reporters later.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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MOUNT MORELAND, South Africa — Wetlands — critical for the health of South Africa's coasts and river systems — already have been degraded or seriously altered by human activity, and experts fear global warming threatens them further.

As talks to shore up the international response to global warming entered their second and crucial week in the South African coastal city of Durban, environmentalists led a tour of a wetlands area nearby.

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It's a spot where spectators start coming an hour before sunset. They set up deck chairs or spread blankets, take a bottle of white wine from the cooler and a block of cheese or snacks, settle down with binoculars, and hope.

This Sunday, the barn swallows didn't put on their show.

Millions of birds, having migrated more than 5,000 miles from Europe and Britain for the southern summer, usually roost in the tall reeds poking through the surface of Lake Victoria at the foot of a hillock called Mount Moreland.

The weather is chilly — at least 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) cooler than normal, says resident Angie Wilken. And the migration is two or three weeks late this year, she says. The birds are still leaving Europe.

"I'm constantly questioning. Is it just the weather? Is that really it?" she says.

Stormy future
Scientists are reluctant to blame climate change for any single unusual weather event or short-term departure from the norm. But studies and computer modeling show that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are disrupting normal weather — both hot and cold spells — around the globe, causing more storms, droughts and floods and affecting wildlife.

If the planet continues to warm at the current pace, one-third of all animal and plant species may become extinct by the end of the century, according to an authoritative panel of U.N. scientists.

In Durban, climate ministers and other top officials, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are expected for the last week of negotiations.

They are under pressure to conclude by Friday with pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions after their current commitments expire next year under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

They also need to make progress on raising billions of dollars to help poor countries cope with global warming if the talks are to be deemed a success.

On Mount Moreland, the roosting of barn swallows, which fill the sky and then swoop onto the sage-green reeds in a single massive ball up to 3 million birds thick, is one of nature's most spectacular displays.

"The horizon just starts spewing them over the top. Then they form a tighter unit, moving left and right. And as they turn, they peel and drop into the reeds as fast as stones dropping. And if you're not watching you miss it," says Wilken, who watches it nearly every evening from October through April.

'Bedtime stories'
The sound before the birds settle for the night is like water running, she says. "We call it bedtime stories."

The vegetation of wetlands like Lake Victoria provides a haven for birds and wildlife, purifies water of nutrients spilled from agriculture and provides a livelihood to poor people who plant its fringes with vegetables or marigolds.

Experts worry about predictions that as the Earth's average temperatures rise, South Africa's east coast will become more arid and the west coast around Durban will get more rainfall, raising the risk of floods and erosion.

"If the wetlands dry out, the impact will be huge on small farmers who exist close to the line," says Damian Waters, a wetlands expert for the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa.

Waters' group and others are working to protect the wetlands and the 250 estuaries that break up South Africa's coastline. Collaborating with local and national authorities, the nonprofit groups are producing detailed topographical maps of wetland areas and how they integrate with farmland and industry.

They encourage big water users in the area to conserve water and replant climate-resilient indigenous vegetation, which has struggled to compete with invasive foreign trees and shrubs that use more water.

Disappearing wetlands could mean trouble for the barn swallows of Mount Moreland, where Wilken won approval from landowners over the years to clear an area for bird watchers to view the natural wonder of the roost.

Some 40 million European barn swallows pass through the area each year, she says, maintaining a low population of summer insects. "They do a huge service when they come to this country," she said.

But she's concerned about a new commercial development and a nearby airport, whose approach path is directly over the field of reeds and whose runways disrupt the normal flow of rainwater into the valley.

"I'm constant worrying," she says. "Is nature going to prevail?"