She said New Zealand negotiators take a bit of a back seat at this stage of the talks. The draft is “still too heavy”.
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Many nations most vulnerable to climate change want to set a goal of below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Hosts France proposed a slimmer draft text at global climate change talks on Wednesday that leaves major issues unresolved, including finance for developing nations. It is not enough across the board.
So this is where the world’s nations have arrived at after more than two decades of ever-larger summits to address what’s characterized as a “crisis” – a call to boo from the sidelines.
Making sure ambition can be raised is key to achieving a 2C limit to global temperature rises – beyond which “dangerous” climate change is expected – or the more stringent 1.5C many countries have backed. “That’s why we need to act within the next 36 to 48 hours. There will be ongoing conversations with Albertans on ensuring that low and middle-income working families will be insulated from any negative effects”. “It is absolutely a weak appreciation of the concept”, he said as he participated in a demonstration calling for climate justice.
Sven Harmeling, climate change advocacy coordinator for aid agency CARE International, agreed such principles could be referred to if required in the future.
Fabius said the new draft was the result of consultations made among countries in the past two days. The talks are scheduled to end Friday.
Many participants remain haunted by the calamitous failure to get a deal in Copenhagen in 2009, the last time the world tried to reach a consensus on dealing with climate change.
De Brum, however, says “it has to fly… there has to be commitment from everyone”. It does not matter what party they belong to.
Diplomats are trying to reach the biggest accord to date to trim emissions and slow global warming.
Geneva and Paris are two grand cities that are closely connected.
It does not resolve the question of the long-term goal of the accord – whether it is to remove carbon emissions from the economy altogether, or just reduce them. Global average surface temperatures have already risen by about 1.0C (1.8F).
There are about 100 places where there are decisions still to be made – either multiple options in brackets, or blank spaces.
USA secretary of state John Kerry also interacted with India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar who is attending the Paris talks.
The new text is 29 pages, against 43 on Saturday.
India strongly put across its point that durable agreement at Paris “cannot” be crafted by “diluting” historical responsibilities or by putting the polluters and the victims at the same level.
We’ll have a guide later this morning to the main sticking points remaining.
Nearby, a pyramid of boxes and speakers broadcast voices recorded by activist group Avaaz. He promised to double U.S. grants for climate adaption to the most vulnerable countries to US$860 million a year.
Rich and poor nations alike both had problems with the text.
The latest talks, called COP21, began on the outskirts of Paris on November 30, gathering 196 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in a bid to agree on a new framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 that involves all countries.
America is also pushing to for more countries to chip in. Reports had linked the United States to the Coalition, which since Tuesday (7 December) has grown beyond the European Union nations, and 79 developing countries from the African, Caribbean and Pacific.
The ministers in charge of negotiations on the issue said there was “no clear landing ground” for compromise yet “as liability and compensation are red lines” for some countries, although they did not specify which ones. “That would be a tremendous sign of progress”, he told The Associated Press in an interview on the sidelines of the Paris climate talks.
He said references to indigenous people, workers’ rights and gender equity were now only being given a token mention in the document. However, more recent research by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has suggested this hiatus is an illusion.
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Representing the umbrella group, of which New Zealand is part, Australia’s Peter Woolcott told the conference the draft text was not the ambitious agreement his group was seeking.
