Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he’s hopeful that negotiators can finalize a landmark climate accord on Saturday and has been working behind the scenes to reach compromises on contentious issues.
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Many developing countries are pressing for a deal that aims to keep temperatures below a 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7-degree Fahrenheit) rise over pre-industrial levels.
Fabius said a few more hours of closed-door talks into Saturday morning would be enough to produce a deal countries could adopt.
This was seen as a significant moment after discussions that began in 2011 about a new global agreement that would stake out a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change.
And Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony de Brum, the driving force behind the “high ambition coalition”, accused some countries of trying to “gut the text” of the strong agreement he and many European Union countries are seeking.
Obama also spoke Thursday by telephone with French President Francois Hollande, during which both expressed their determination to reach an “ambitious and durable” accord at the summit.
The “common but differentiated of responsibilities” was built into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which required developed countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions but required more or less nothing of developing countries.
The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who’s chairing the talks, says that “things are moving in the right direction”, according to the BBC, and explained to French TV reporters that “the atmosphere is good, things are positive”.
Developing countries are also insisting that the agreement is crystal clear on how much money wealthy nations plan on forking over for screwing up the Earth. And therefore I will present the text not on Friday evening, as I had thought, but Saturday morning, early in the morning and we will be able to make the necessary decisions by midday.
“The Coalition brings together developed and developing countries from around the world as we lay the groundwork for a safe climate future”.
“I am encouraged by the continued progress we made overnight”, McKenna said in a statement released to media.
India’s environment minister warned Friday that success at Paris climate-saving talks was not guaranteed, saying rich nations were baulking at the concerns of poorer counterparts.
Analysts said the delay is not necessarily a bad sign. “We have just very limited hours remaining”, he added.
Possible solutions had been identified in years of negotiations leading up to the conference, he said. Getting 200 countries to agree on anything is tough.
From that point, the goal was for representatives from 195 countries to transform this rhetoric into action, by instituting reforms and programs that, over the long run, will positively affect the world’s climate. The issue, known as “differentiation” in United Nations climate lingo, was expected to be one of the last to be resolved.
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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.
