He also cast his argument in broader terms, maintaining that climate change is literally a life and death issue for some nations now and will soon be for more.
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“With critical issues on finance, human rights, and support for the most vulnerable still to be fought over, the European Union must step up and do its fair share so that the Paris deal doesn’t turn into a raw deal for the poorest”, said Susann Scherbarth, climate justice and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, one of the organisers.
The text still recognises “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security” and includes a commitment to “pursue sustainable development in a manner that fosters climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions, and that does not threaten food production and distribution”. He also announced a doubling of grant-based funding for developing countries.
Kerry was holding talks at the Le Bourget conference site outside of Paris on Thursday with the environment ministers of Brazil and India, according to the State Department. He cited small-island states that hold “legitimate concerns that the sea will swallow their lands”. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations.
An announcement earlier in the week in Paris underscored the scale of the financing that is available.
The first draft of the Paris Outcome, prepared after two days of high-level ministerial deliberations, was released by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius yesterday at a crucial climate change conference. “The text is not bold enough as it stands”, he said.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, Fabius warned, however. In particular, progress has been made on climate adaptation and capacity building.
Many countries said the new text was now unbalanced, with Malaysia’s team quipping the text was indeed balanced in that everybody was equally unhappy.
“A durable agreement can not be crafted by diluting historical responsibilities or by putting the polluters and the victims at the same level”, said Indian Environment Minister Shri Prakash Javadekar.
A draft of the text for the agreement released on Wednesday contained the potential for ambitious targets on curbing rising global temperatures and cutting emissions over the coming decades, as well as weaker options, and a new text is expected later today.
Fabius said that “we’ve made progress but still a lot of work remains to be done”.
Australia has “serious concerns” over the latest form of a global climate agreement, with foreign minister Julie Bishop warning of a challenging few days ahead in Paris.
One country that has often been cited as not supportive, however, is Saudi Arabia, whose stance activists have criticized in the talks.
Saudi Arabia is also suggesting it will not accept a long-term goal of keeping average global temperatures within 1.5 degrees C of pre-industrial levels, a threshold many low-lying island nations say is an existential threat.
“But we need to press forward for ambition”. “It will take time for science to mature and implications to become better understood to guide practical action for such an ambition”.
It refers to money for developing countries to tackle the effects of climate change, and to help fund a transition towards an economy that relies less on fossil fuels, the main cause for the man-made rise in global temperatures.
Rich countries promised six years ago in Copenhagen to muster $100 billion (92 billion euros) a year from 2020 to help developing nations make the costly shift to clean energy, and to cope with the impact of global warming.
The money will be part of an existing promise by wealthy countries to jointly mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance.
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Noting that developed countries will have to significantly increase the level of their own efforts and reach net zero emissions in the next 5-10 years, experts said that if they fail to do so, the 1.5 degree target will “remain a hollow shell – devoid of any real significance”.
