"The Chinese government pays great attention to the climate change problem," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference.

Industrialised countries should carry out their promises to address the problem, she said.

China has resisted calls for a cap even on emissions growth, arguing that most carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere was produced by developed nations as they industrialised, and they have no right to deny the same economic growth to others.

But a government think-tank said glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, which account for nearly half of China's total glacier coverage, were shrinking at a rate of 7 percent a year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The report echoed a warning by the UN Development Programme, which said China's glaciers could disappear by 2100.

The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development said the disappearing glaciers would cause rivers to dry up, leading to more drought, desertification and sandstorms.

An official with the Ministry of Water Resources played down the potential effects of global warming on a South-North water diversion project that aims to pump water from southern rivers to the parched north.

"I think this issue does not have very close relevance to the South-North Water Diversion Project," the official, Li Yuanhua, told a news conference.

But one of the engineering feats being floated is a plan to harness glacier-fed rivers from the Tibetan highlands to feed poor and arid western areas.

Li said the focus should be on treatment and conservancy.

"If we can improve water efficiency by 10 percent, we can save more than 40 billion cubic metres per year," he said. One cubic metre equals 35.3 cubic feet.

The Foreign Ministry's Jiang said China, which aims to make a 20 percent reduction in the amount of energy used to generate each dollar of national income by 2010, was making good on its commitments to help deal with climate change.

"We are seriously putting into practice our promises and have put in place a series of measures and policies to deal with climate change, raising energy efficiency on a large scale, saving energy and developing renewable energy," she said.