By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) - Efforts to combat global warming risk running out of steam because rich, developed nations are failing to show the necessary leadership, Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N.'s climate change secretariat, said on Friday.

In an interview, De Boer said goodwill and political desire remain strong after scientific reports last year on the climate crisis produced an agreement in December to try for a new global climate deal, but that little is happening in practice.

"We need leadership on the part of the rich nations and money on the table that will make it possible for developing countries to do things that are not realistic within their economic growth and poverty eradication parameters," he said.

"I am not sensing strong signals on willingness to show leadership and I'm not clear how the money is going to come onto the table," said de Boer, in London to meet former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is pushing a climate change initiative.

"We know the why, we know the what. But there is not enough focus on the how."

De Boer, whose U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) runs the Kyoto Protocol on cutting climate-warming carbon emissions, said poor nations had agreed to come forward with viable and verifiable climate policies.

But to kickstart the process, developed countries must not only show they are taking tough action themselves but also take practical steps to help the poorer nations fulfil those promises through technology transfer and financial aid.

"I am not getting clarity on how governments will mobilise the financial resources that will make possible further engagement on the part of developing countries," de Boer said.

Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for transport and power, causing floods and famines and threatening millions of lives.

Rich and poor nations agreed in December after long and rancorous talks to open negotiations on a successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. They aim to strike that new deal at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

"The trouble is that rich nations haven't really yet begun to think in a very concentrated way how the resources are going to be generated that will make a Copenhagen agreement work," said de Boer.

"I am talking about, what is the future of the carbon market? Are governments going to be auctioning emission rights in future? What are they going to do with the proceeds of that auctioning? Are they going to use it in part to help developing countries through development cooperation aid?"

URGENCY, CLARITY

De Boer also urged a greater feeling of urgency.

"We need clarity now, not in 2050 when we will all be pushing up daisies," he said, referring to a target to halve global emissions by 2050 tentatively agreed by the Group of Eight industrialised nations last year.

"We need to know what needs to be done by 2020. That means greater urgency and a shorter timeframe."

De Boer called for greater cooperation not just within governments and international institutions but between them. Climate change will impact everyone and everywhere, and so cannot be compartmentalised as has tended to happen, he said.

"That idea is quite new. People have only quite recently begun to realise that although climate change in its origins may be an environmental issue, it is an environmental problem that is looking for an economic solution." (Editing by Catherine Evans)

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