Ahead of the climate change conference in Cancun, a top UN official has said the talks are not expected to yield the "final deal", though results are expected in areas like forestry, adaptation, fast-track funding and technology transfer.

"We are at a very different point in the climate negotiations," Robert Orr, UN Assistant Secretary General for policy planning, told reporters here yesterday. "No one is expecting the final answer, the final deal in Cancun," Mexico, where the conference would commence on December 7, he said.

"If you try to use the Copenhagen bar for the Cancun conference, it wouldn't work," he said. "We need to make progress...."

The contentious climate meeting last year yielded the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which called for limiting rise of global temperature to 2 degrees, USD 100 billion in long term finance to developing countries and USD 30 billion in short term finance to the poorest and most vulnerable countries.

This year, Orr said, governments were expected to produce outcomes on areas where there was already some consensus like forestry, adaptation, fast-track funding and technology transfer.

"The longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money," he said. "Significant progress is possible in Cancun."

The UN official, however, pointed out that certain aspects of negotiations remained tumultuous, including mitigation, emission reduction and future of the Kyoto Protocol.

"The long term tough issues on mitigation and some of the financing issues will play out over time but we need to see forward movement on those if not a final resolution," he said.

A UN advisory group has presented a report with suggestions to come up with the USD 100 billion a year by 2020 for poor countries to combat climate change.

Noting that it was unlikely the mechanism of providing this massive amount of money could be worked out this time around, Orr said that governments were advised to take into account the new report in their deliberations.

"That report will be taken up for discussion in Cancun...We're not looking for agreement on it at Cancun...It will require discussion over time...We're talking about very large flows of money through multiple channels," he said.

Orr also underlined that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expected "results" and did not want negotiators to get "caught up in process." "Pragmatism is the order of the day," he said.