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Reuters
KATOWICE, Poland
Ministers and negotiators from nearly 200 nations were making a final effort on Friday evening to find consensus on the language and sticking points of a package to implement a landmark agreement to combat climate change.
Countries are on a self-imposed deadline to produce a “rulebook” to flesh out details of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and which comes into force in 2020.
Talks in Katowice, Poland, under way since December 2, have been clouded by political divisions. Progress had been slow until some deadlocks were broken and draft texts produced overnight. Before the talks started, many expected that the deal would not be robust and fall short of the detailed plan scientists have said is needed to limit global warming to well below a 2 degree-Celsius rise this century.
But on Friday evening there was more optimism than in the morning that compromises could be made to make the text acceptable to all parties. Exhausted delegates were trying to iron out differences in what could be a long night in the sprawling Spodek conference venue, a flying saucer-shaped concert and sports hall. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said he had told the Polish presidency of the talks that it was important to conclude work today “with the highest possible level of ambition”.
“It’s essential for me that Katowice is not a failure. The worst thing that could happen to us is that. There would be the idea of chaos, the idea that to a certain extent we would be reproducing in Katowice what happened in Copenhagen.”
KATOWICE, Poland
Ministers and negotiators from nearly 200 nations were making a final effort on Friday evening to find consensus on the language and sticking points of a package to implement a landmark agreement to combat climate change.
Countries are on a self-imposed deadline to produce a “rulebook” to flesh out details of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and which comes into force in 2020.
Talks in Katowice, Poland, under way since December 2, have been clouded by political divisions. Progress had been slow until some deadlocks were broken and draft texts produced overnight. Before the talks started, many expected that the deal would not be robust and fall short of the detailed plan scientists have said is needed to limit global warming to well below a 2 degree-Celsius rise this century.
But on Friday evening there was more optimism than in the morning that compromises could be made to make the text acceptable to all parties. Exhausted delegates were trying to iron out differences in what could be a long night in the sprawling Spodek conference venue, a flying saucer-shaped concert and sports hall. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said he had told the Polish presidency of the talks that it was important to conclude work today “with the highest possible level of ambition”.
“It’s essential for me that Katowice is not a failure. The worst thing that could happen to us is that. There would be the idea of chaos, the idea that to a certain extent we would be reproducing in Katowice what happened in Copenhagen.”
