Climate change talks falter near finish line
Draft proposes rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
Efforts to craft a global accord to combat climate change stumbled yesterday with China and many other nations refusing to yield ground, forcing host France to extend the UN summit by a day to overcome stubborn divisions.
Despite the delay, many expressed hope the 195 nations meeting in Paris would grasp the strongest agreement yet to bind both rich and poor to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions at the climax of four years of negotiations.
“There are still a couple of very difficult issues that we’re working on,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, saying there had been progress in overnight talks. Fraught discussions overnight exposed deep divisions on issues including a proposed goal to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of the century.
China was among many nations laying out tough demands, resisting calls for early reviews of its plans to curb rising emissions.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a final text, meant to chart a way to far wider use of greener energy such as wind and solar power, would now be presented for review only today, a day later than planned.
“We are nearly there. I’m optimistic,” Fabius told reporters in the early afternoon, flanked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Sleep-starved envoys tasked with staving off catastrophic climate change are on track to seal a historic accord, the French hosts of UN talks said yesterday, although the biggest pitfalls were yet to be cleared.
The 195-nation conference in Paris had been scheduled to wrap up yesterday, but was extended another day after ministers failed to bridge deep divides during a second consecutive all-night round of negotiations.
Still, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is presiding over the talks, voiced confidence the event would culminate with a pact. “We are almost at the end of the road and I am optimistic,” said Fabius, whose hopes were echoed by many negotiators and observers despite potential dealbreakers still up in the air.
Deal at 9am
Fabius said he would submit the deal at 9am (0800 GMT) and was “sure” it would be approved. “It will be a big step forward for humanity as a whole,” he said.
World leaders have billed the Paris talks as the last chance to avert disastrous climate change: increasingly severe drought, floods and storms, as well as rising seas that would engulf islands and populated coasts.
The outcome of a laborious two-decade-long process, the post-2020 accord would commit all nations to curb greenhouse gases that trap solar heat, warming Earth’s surface and disrupting its delicate climate system.
Highlighting the urgency of the moment, US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, spoke by phone yesterday about the Paris negotiations, according to China’s foreign ministry.
Xi said the world powers “must strengthen coordination with all parties” and “make joint efforts to ensure the Paris climate summit reaches an accord”, according to a statement on the ministry’s website.
The planned accord would seek to revolutionise the world’s energy system by cutting back or potentially eliminating the burning of coal, oil and gas, whose carbon dioxide is the big warming culprit.
UN efforts from the 1990s have been hamstrung by rows between developed and developing nations over sharing the emissions-curbing burden, aiding climate-vulnerable poor countries and funding the shift to cleaner renewables.
Developing nations have insisted established economic powerhouses must shoulder the lion’s share of responsibility as they have emitted most of the greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution.
But the United States and other rich nations say emerging giants must also do more.
They point out that developing countries now account for most of today’s emissions and thus will be largely responsible for future warming.
The financing issues remained the biggest potential deal-breakers in Paris, highlighted in a draft text presented by Fabius on Thursday that was debated through the night.
Rich countries promised six years ago in Copenhagen to muster $100 billion (Dh367 billion) a year from 2020 to help developing nations make the energy shift and cope with the impact of global warming.