BackNew climate agreement draft raises hope of weak deal
A new and less contentious 27-page draft for Paris climate agreement was released late night, increasing hopes of a final agreement for a new regime
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New Delhi: A new and less-contentious 27-page draft for the Paris climate agreement was released late on Thursday night, increasing hopes of a final agreement for a new global climate change regime.
Experts agreed that a deal, if reached, would be a weak one.
The Guardian reported that the new agreement has only 50 contentious clauses (those with which one or more of the countries or groupings negotiating a final agreement have disagreements), down from 361 in the previous draft.
The new agreement also achieves a compromise on the commitment to limit global average temperature increase. A grouping of most threatened countries (including the Maldives) had sought 1.5 degrees celsius as the limit, while most others wanted 2 degrees celsius. The agreement commits to restricting temperature rise to below 2 degrees and working towards a 1.5 degree limit.
The new agreement also has much clearer language surrounding so-called “climate finance" and there appears to be movement towards the $100 billion corpus the developed world will help create, although this is unlikely to satisfy many of the developing nations including India.
Still, the release of the final draft agreement was pushed back to Saturday.
The new 27-page draft, presented by the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, includes key issues raised by India including sustainable lifestyle and the principles based on equity and common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR).
India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar had criticized the developed world for not addressing the issue of differentiation and sustainable lifestyle in the 29-page draft released on Wednesday. For India, Thursday’s draft marks a progress from the draft released on Wednesday, even though many issues still remain to be addressed.
“I am submitting a new draft to you (nations). I would like you (nations) to look at the document in a new perspective with final agreement in mind. We want an agreement. We are extremely close to finishing line. It’s time to come to an agreement," said Fabius after releasing the draft.
“Some complex issues still remain, brackets like finance, differentiation and ambition, which needs to be discussed in the coming hours," he added.
Last week, negotiators came out with a 48-page draft which summed up the talks that started way back in 2011 at Durban. Experts said the draft text released on Thursday night is still weak and unlikely to meet everyone’s idea of justice and compensation.
Friday—which is the last scheduled day for the Paris climate summit—will see very hectic activity to ensure political solutions to sticky points like loss and damage, and climate finance.
Negotiators and ministers from over 190 countries gathered in Paris on 30 November to open the Conference of Parties (CoP) under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) for a new climate deal.
The big issues they were expected to resolve were: the limit to which the earth will be allowed to warm up over pre-industrial revolution levels; a deadline or road-map for moving away from fossil fuels (or stop greenhouse gas emissions); climate finance; stock-taking (announcements of reductions in emission levels) and ratcheting (new emission reduction targets) and the frequency with which these will be done; the creation of an entity to track the emission reduction goals of countries (this was among the first items to be left out of the drafts); the creation of a loss and damage mechanism and reparations by the developed world (again, this was among the first items to be watered down in the drafts).
The new draft released on Thursday still reflects major disagreements between countries on many issues like finance and technology transfer.
The text is also weak on how countries, especially developed countries, are going to enhance their ambition to cut emissions before and after 2020.
Experts said the new draft text would lead to a weak climate deal due to factors such as the absence of a carbon budget from the main text, a weak climate finance section, deletion of a clause related to loss and damage, and lack of clarity on technology transfer.
“In the closing hours of the Paris talks, we have been presented with a draft deal that denies the world justice. By including a clause for no future claim of compensation and liability, the US has ensured people suffering from the disastrous impacts of climate change will never be able to seek the justice owed to them," said Adriano Campolina, who is chief executive of ActionAid International, an NGO, while reacting to near final draft of the CoP21 climate agreement in Paris.
“This unfair and unjust draft deal won’t face up to the realities of climate change and will only serve to widen the chasm between rich and poor. Rich countries have a responsibility to ensure a fair global deal for everyone, not just themselves, and as we move into these final hours of negotiations, poorer countries must not settle for anything less," Campolina added.
India-based environmental think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the Paris agreement is moving towards a weak deal.
“The current text essentially promotes a bottom-up regime characterized by the voluntary country-driven climate actions, further weakening the historical responsibilities of developed countries. If nothing changes, we are looking at a weak deal at Paris," said Chandra Bhushan, CSE’s deputy director general.
“The removal of the language on global carbon budget would mean that equity is wiped off the new agreement as fair allocation of the carbon budget is the only way to operationalize equity," Bhushan added.
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