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A change in the international business view of global warming is helping to underpin a shift among Australian companies towards a worldwide pact aimedat tackling climate change.

``I think we are developing all the time," said Mr Juhani Santaholma, chairman of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce's joint working party on climate change.

Changing business perceptions on global warming provided a backdrop to two weeks of talks on climate change, held under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which ended on Friday in the west German city of Bonn.

Although it was considered to be only a technical meeting, ministers and officials claimed it had injected a new sense of spirit into the global warming negotiations.

Even so, they said several months of tough talks lay ahead before agreement on steps to curb global warming could be reached in The Hague next year.

``Many Australian companies have moved from seeing climate change measures as a commercial risk to seeing them more as a commercial opportunity," said Mr Alan Tate, a Sydney-based consultant on business strategies for addressing global warming.

As the negotiations over a final agreement on global warming enter a critical stage, a string of big Australian companies are expected to announce a switch in their strategy to a more proactive stance.

This is despite the continuing strong opposition of sections of Australian industry which argue that the framework for addressing global warming, as set out in Kyoto two years ago, is unacceptable.

Under the so-called Kyoto Protocol, governments agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming by 5.2 per cent from 1990 levels by the period 2008 and 2012.

The UNFCCC talks are considered to be the most complicated and ambiguous international negotiations ever undertaken. The next 12 months of talks will focus on establishing the rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

At the same time, while officials and ministers continue to argue over proposals for trading emissions between countries to help them meet their greenhouse gas commitments, several companies already appear to be preparing to take the plunge into the new market.

There are at present no rules for trading in emissions and Washington is resisting calls from the European Union that a cap be placed on the scale of trading by individual nations.

Trading in emissions has the potential to be a billion-dollar business with big energy companies beginning to mount pilot programs on how the trade could work.

Mr Santaholma said: ``From the point of view of industry, as the implementation of Kyoto draws closer, the more we need dialogue between governments and the private sector for establishing the practical rules."