BAGUIO CITY?The Philippine government is negotiating with the United States and other industrialized countries for compensation on behalf of victims killed or left homeless by calamities attributed to global warming.

Philippine representatives have begun to push the argument that rich countries were responsible for the erratic weather because of their inability to stop or reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by their respective industries, a top government scientist said here on Monday.

Dr. Graciano Yumul Jr., undersecretary for research of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), said the Philippine?s 20-member delegation has been discussing compensation on the sidelines of recent climate change talks on the progress made by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Yumul addressed a climate change forum sponsored by the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences (NIGS) at UP Baguio here.

The negotiation is on its initial stage, he said, and the Philippine government has not yet quantified how much it wants from rich countries for calamities triggered by Tropical Storm ?Ondoy? in September and Typhoon ?Pepeng? in October.

?The US immediately reacted when a government official and several scientists said [Ondoy and Pepeng] were not [consequences of] climate change at a Senate hearing on climate change,? he said.

?This is why [government] has made the conscious effort [to assert that] global warming is real and is harming the country,? Yumul said.

The government began talks early this year with the United States, which declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The document is an international agreement that sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Yumul said many rich countries have resorted to buying ?carbon credits? from poorer nations to fulfill their UNFCCC obligations without disrupting their economies.

The UNFCCC allows developed nations to offer poor countries funds for climate change programs. The funds are translated into ?carbon credits? to offset the amount of greenhouse gas that rich countries are required to curb before 2012.

Yumul said ?carbon credits? have become the third most traded currency in the world, next to the American dollar and gold.

?But the Philippines does not want aid. It wants compensation,? he said.

?For one death in Japan, 17 die in the Philippines [because] they have better resources for evacuating people or building better dikes,? Yumul said.