Katowice: Nations on Sunday struck a deal to breathe life into the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world’s most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.
Delegates from nearly 200 states finalised a common rulebook designed to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
But it deferred rules on carbon credits — a spur to business — and lacked any firm commitment to strengthen countries’ emissions cut targets by 2020, when the agreement comes into force.
“Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility,” said COP24 President Michal Kurtyka as he gavelled through the deal after talks in Poland that ran deep into overtime.
WARMING BELOW 2 degrees C
At their heart, negotiations were about how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.
As such it left the parties a long way from the Paris deal’s goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, let alone the cap of 1.5C needed to avert more extreme weather, rising sea levels and the loss of plant and animal species.
The world is heading for a 3-5C rise in temperatures this century, the UN World Meteorological Organization has said.
The Paris Agreement is based on individual commitments and expectations for the Polish talks to produce much more than rules for how those would be measured had always been low: the unity built in Paris had been shattered by a wave of governments placing national agendas before collective action. — Agencies
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