UN climate meeting most important since Paris 2015

KATOWICE, Poland: Halfway through talks to breathe life into the Paris climate deal negotiators haggled over how to share the cost of curbing global warming and struggled to bridge deep political divides.

The two weeks of talks, which began at the start of last week, are billed as the most important United Nations conference since the Paris 2015 agreement on climate change.

The challenge is to meet a yearend deadline to agree a rule book to limit global warming, when the unity that underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented. US President Donald Trump repeated his call to scrap the Paris climate pact.

By the end of Saturday, negotiators aimed to have a simplified a draft for highlevel ministerial debate due to start on today. Delegates said a major issue was how to reassure developing countries that richer nations would deliver on promises to help finance the cost of shifting to a lower carbon economy.

Environmental campaigners are concerned the Katowice talks will lack ambition, after the United States said this year it was withdrawing from the UN process. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, in the talks on Saturday added a further challenge by blocking consensus on a major scientific report on warming.

On the streets of Katowice, the capital of Poland’s Silesian coalmining region, thousands of demonstrators marched to demand a deal to limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5degC. Environmental campaigners also marched in Paris.