French President Francois Hollande, right, French Foreign Minister and president of the COP21 Laurent Fabius, second right, United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon raise their hands after adopting the global agreement.
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The 31-page draft, dubbed the “Paris agreement” is being presented to negotiators from 190 nations, and if adopted, would limit rising temperatures and sea levels, and eventually hold man-made emissions to the levels that nature can absorb. “It is linked with the convention (United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change) while Common But Differentiated Responsibilities is imbibed in it”, Javadekar said.
The conference leader, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, said the draft was ambitious, balanced and legally binding.
While Canada’s environment minister applauds the newly approved “Paris agreement” on climate change, some say that merely signing the pact isn’t enough. It also lists 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) as an aspirational goal, but leaves a lot of the decision-making for that until a future date.
Under the deal, individual countries will have individual plans to reduce emissions in the coming decades, with a schedule to jointly update their emissions standards in 2020 and further tighten standards every fives years from then, as The New York Times reports.
Barack Obama and Xi Jinping have agreed to work towards reaching a deal on climate change at Paris.
The mechanism to help address the damage that poorer, less developed countries might suffer as a result of climate change came with a proviso it did not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation.
At the same time, 350.org said that the oil, gas, and coal industries can take “little comfort” in the agreement because the 2° pledge will require keeping 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground. “We’ll only be part of the way there when it comes to reducing carbon from the atmosphere”, he said.
“We must protect the planet that sustains us”, Ban told the negotiators, adding: “The whole world is watching. Billions of people are relying on your wisdom”, he said.
The last draft accord, released Thursday night, did not resolve several key issues, including how rich and developing countries would share the burden in fighting global warming.
After four years of fraught UN talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor and island states against rising economic powerhouses, Fabius urged officials from almost 200 nations to support the deal.
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Developed countries are supposed to do more than the developing countries and are required to take absolute emission reductions.
