“With this, I would be able to go home and tell my people that our chance for survival is not lost”, he said.
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The latest draft is slightly shorter than previous drafts and has lost most of its “square brackets” which denote disagreement.
Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony de Brum, the driving force behind the coalition, warned there had been a “co-ordinated campaign to gut the text” of ambition by some countries, and pledged to fight for a strong agreement.
She says “if you want to tackle climate change, you need ambition and political will. Brazil proudly supports the high ambition coalition”.
In another development, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a conversation over the phone with President Barack Obama. Not everything had been resolved, but a number of concerns raised by India and developing countries seemed to have been taken on board.
Turnbull had already accepted the 1.5C target ahead of New Zealand’s shift. “The success of Paris will now depend on spirit of accommodation and flexibility of developed nations”, he said.
India was of the view that this line would make it incumbent on every country to join in the effort to mobilise climate finance.
Other issues, according to observers: Whether there would be reparations paid to countries that will see irreparable damage from climate change but have done nearly nothing to cause it and how countries will have their pollution-reduction efforts monitored.
The banner ran the length of the main pedestrian thoroughfare between buildings at the climate talks, a passage that organizers dubbed the “Champs-Elysees” after the famed Parisian avenue.
Reminding that even though as Secretary-General of the United Nations he is not engaged in negotiations, he said he is urging negotiators to make their decisions based on a global vision. However, Gao said the accord should mean that “each country can do it at any time” as they deemed proper. The final result of the talks, which was initially scheduled for Friday, is likely to come Saturday evening.
“We had a very constructive meeting”.
Participants attend a conference at the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, France, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015.
Fabius was expected to present a new, potentially final draft of the elusive accord Saturday morning at 9 a.m. (0800 GMT). Ban planned to met with key ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, to push the process forward.
“This needs consensus”, said Michael Jacobs, an economist with the New Climate Economy project, speaking to reporters outside Paris. “There’s a lot of negotiating to do”, Jacobs, who is also co-host of the talks, added.
As he released the draft of the pact, Mr Fabius said a deal was “extremely close” but appealed for compromise from all sides.
Civil society groups, in the meanwhile, are planning protests and gatherings to express their displeasure at the inability of the countries to agree to an ambitious climate deal. In theory, it involves developed countries paying for developing countries to deal with the consequences of climate change – flooding, drought, storms – but also helping developing countries to power their economies through greener technology.
Ministers and their officials have been working around the clock in the French capital to finalise a global deal to combat climate change.
“This negotiation is most complicated, most hard, but most important for humanity”.
“But the atmosphere is good, things are positive, things are going in the right direction”, he said.
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Negotiators from China, the USA and other nations are haggling over how to share the burden of fighting climate change.
