An official from the United Nations saidin Beijing Tuesday that it is extremely important for the Kyoto Protocol to continue.

The future of the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact which legally binds 37 wealthy countries to cut emissions by 2012, is widely seen as being threatened. Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not extend it, while the United States has never signed on to it.

"Its first commitment period is about to end, but the protocol itself is not dead," Janos Pasztor, Executive Secretary of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP), told Xinhua in an interview.

Major climate talks to be held in South Africa at the end of the year are expected to signal whether nations will be able to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol's new commitment period.

"Whether we are able to make a new agreement at this time remains to be seen, but it is very important to have a new agreement of that nature," said Pasztor, who is in Beijing for a preparatory meeting of the GSP.

The GSP, established by the United Nations Secretary-General in August 2010, is focusing on how to put its sustainable development agenda into practice in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The GSP will issue its final report by the end of 2011.

"The Secretary General will try to make use of this report to have an impact on many inter-governmental processes, including preparations for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, and the annual meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," said Pasztor.

"If the report is successful, we will have a politically feasible roadmap," he said.

He hopes the report, which will include five or six recommendations, will be accepted by world leaders, and then "the world will move toward sustainable development."

Regarding China's role in working to achieve a sustainable global future, he said that China's incorporation of the concept of sustainability in its five-year plan is quite amazing.

He believes that if China continues along that path, it will show its ability to reduce its gas emissions.

"We are here looking for good ideas and approaches that China is experimenting with, so that others who may not have those ideas can learn," he said.