The goal of the deal is to hold global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-Industrial Revolution levels and to try to cap it at 1.5C.
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In the hours counting down to the final deal, the Institutional Investors Group on climate change – a forum representing mainstream investors with £10 trillion managed assets – explained how it is providing financial institutions with a “common voice to encourage public policies, investment practices and corporate behaviour which address long-term risks and opportunities associated with climate change”. “France calls upon nations to adopt first universal agreement on climate change”, Hollande said.
The years-long quest for a universal pact to avert catastrophic climate change neared the finish line Saturday with conference host France announcing that the final draft had been completed in the early hours of the morning. “I’m optimistic”, Fabius told reporters in the early afternoon, flanked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “There will be no putting it off. A decisive agreement is here and now”, Mr Hollande declared, saying that delegates were “attached to this handsome idea that the worldwide community can act [AND]what brings us together is the planet itself”.
“We really need to be keeping around 90 percent of all current reserves (of fossil fuels) in the ground”, Anderson said.
Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar also said differentiation was the biggest dispute and accused developed countries of not showing enough flexibility in the talks.
The meeting, which began on November 30 and was to conclude on Friday, was extended by a day to clinch a possible deal.
“We are in the same situation with most developing countries, because I think our contribution has been very ambitious”.
LE BOURGET, France (AP) – France presented negotiators from 190 nations with what it called a “final draft” of an unprecedented climate deal to slow global warming and urged them to approve it on Saturday.
Amid thunderous applause and an atmosphere charged with emotion, French president Francois Hollande and his foreign minister Laurent Fabius – the conference president – have called on delegates at the COP21 climate summit to adopt a historic agreement to tackle climate change. U.N. climate conferences often run over time, because of the high stakes and widely differing demands and economic concerns of countries as diverse as the United States and tiny Pacific island nations.
A source in the French government confirmed that negotiators had come up with a new draft, and that it was being translated into the six official languages of the United Nations before ministers gather to consider it for adoption. Reacting to the unveiling of the draft, US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed optimism that the text would be approved by the nations meeting in Paris.
“Even at 1.5 degrees, scientific consensus tells us very many of us will not be safe”, Giza Gaspar Martins, the Angolan chair of the Least Developed Countries negotiating group, said in a statement Saturday. That was a key demand of poor countries ravaged by the effects of climate change and rising sea levels. That’s a new concept in the climate talks, suggesting the most advanced developing countries should also pitch in. The previous emissions treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, included only rich countries and the USA never signed on.
Anticipation was building in the conference center outside Paris after two weeks of talks, culminating a four-year effort to produce the first worldwide pact asking all countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Asked by the AP whether the draft would be the final one, he said only if “it’s more or less acceptable”.
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The U.S. resisted legally binding emissions targets, instead pressing for robust transparency rules to make sure countries live up to their commitments.
