People visit the American display at COP21, the United Nations conference on climate change at Le Bourget.
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The officials, not authorized to be publicly named in discussing the negotiations, would not elaborate on the contents of the draft.
The 27-page draft released late Thursday night, however, showed that some progress has been made compared to the 29-page draft released on Wednesday and countries have found some common ground in course of marathon negotiations.
“All the conditions are met to reach a universal, ambitious agreement”, he said. “Any country that holds out and wrecks the deal here is going to be regarded as a pariah in many quarters and I doubt any will really want to put itself in that position”, said Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence think-tank.
India’s Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar, underlined the divisions that remained between the rich and poor countries, adding: “The developed world is not showing flexibility”.
But John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, said “that’s way out there” and doesn’t take into account politics, including USA conservative opposition, and the needs of African nations to develop.
Officials, including an American delegation, were confident Friday that a sweeping deal to begin confronting global warming was within reach, but it will take working into overtime to make that happen.
French President Francois Hollande will join the Paris climate talks as delegates debate what organizers hope is the final draft of an unprecedented agreement among all countries to fight global warming together.
“Following the consultations I will have, I will be in a position tomorrow morning at 9:00am (local time) to present to all parties a text, which, I am sure, will be approved and will be a big step forward for humanity as a whole”, Mr Fabius said.
“We are nearly at the end of the road and I am optimistic”, said Fabius, whose hopes were echoed by many negotiators and observers despite potential deal-breakers still up in the air.
The issue of “loss and damage” – the recognition that some of the most vulnerable countries need support to cope with irreversible impacts such as inundation of their land from rising sea levels – is also hugely hard, with developed countries refusing anything that could open them up to liability or compensation.
Negotiators at the Paris climate talks stayed up for the third night in a row as the Friday deadline to reach a global deal to limit climate change beyond 2020 came and went.
The U.S. and European countries want to move away from so-called “differentiation” among economies and want big emerging countries like China and India to pitch in more in a final climate deal.
A bracket-free version of the agreement could be presented Saturday morning.
“There are still outstanding issues”, Ban told reporters Friday in Le Bourget, outside Paris.
Negotiators from more than 190 countries are aiming to create something that’s never been done before: an agreement for all countries to reduce man-made carbon emissions and co-operate in adapting to rising seas and fiercer weather caused by human activity.
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In a Thursday blog post, the Natural Resources Defense Council noted three remaining issues for finance negotiators: whether countries should increase their spending target of $100 billion annually by 2022, how that would impact developing countries’ carbon reduction work and how to promote climate financing in the private sector.
