NEGOTIATORS in Paris are to present their final draft text for a deal on limiting climate change after working hard to thrash out remaining details at Ministerial level. The French President, François Hollande, is due to join Ban Ki-moon at the landmark summit when the text is expected to be published. The draft is predicted to be officially adopted in the final round of the Summit, known as COP 21.
Sources said the final text was only settled after the negotiators and ministers worked for days at Le Bourget in north-east Paris. Laurent Fabius – the French Foreign Minister who has marshalled the text through its final stages as President of the talks – said on Thursday night: “All the conditions are ripe for a universal and ambitious agreement.”
As the negotiations ran into overtime – something that has happened at virtually every such meeting of the last 20 years – Fabius on Friday called for a cooling-off period to allow more high level lobbying behind closed doors. He put off planned public plenary sessions, which risk being volatile, and gave the floor over to closed meetings in a last push for an agreement.
Peaceful protests are planned by climate activists across Paris. Civil society groups will hand out thousands of red tulips to represent red lines they say should not be crossed, and hold a rally under the Eiffel Tower if and when a deal is reached. Even with US President Barack Obama’s efforts to call in political favours with the Chinese President, divisions remained on Friday between the US, India and China.
China and India have been accused by some negotiators of trying to water down the long term ambition of the draft climate deal, but its negotiators argued rich countries were trying to railroad them into a deal.
There are many roadblocks to the deal. One has to do with what level of temperature rise the world would accept – even fractions of a degree could make big differences in terms of the impacts from sea level rise and extreme weather the world is likely to see.
Finance is a big issue – poorer countries want rich countries to pay for the damage they could sustain due to climate change. While it may cost trillions to change our economy not even USD 100 billion is in the bag. Rich countries like the US will not accept any wording, which causes their companies to be held liable for any damages caused by climate change.
Both the developed and developing worlds continue to throw verbal roadblocks to ensure that no bloc is held liable for any climate change impacts. However, throwing blame and trading verbal quotes will not bring about any positive effects in actually combating climate change. This negative attitude must change.
