UN climate conference to go into extra time

The UN climate conference is set to continue into Saturday, conference head Michal Kurtyka said on Friday.
Negotiators are to meet from 4 am (0300 GMT) while the final plenary session is now set from 6 am (0500 GMT). These times could still change as the conference has seen many delays.
Despite two weeks of intensive debate, many issues were still unresolved when the conference entered its final day on Friday morning in Katowice, Poland.
“That’s gonna be a long night. We will now still negotiate for very,very long,” said German Environmental Minister Svenja Schulze said earlier. Negotiators from 196 countries have been working long nights in Katowice in a bid to make progress on drafting a rule book for implementing and financing the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Back then it was agreed that global warming should be kept to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and preferably to less than 1.5 degrees, but countries were to put forward their own plans to cut emissions.
Scientists say the measures agreed so far fall desperately short of what is needed. Schulze, along with EU Environment Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete and representatives from the Marshall Islands, the Maldives and Ethiopia, called for more ambition in the summit’s final rule book.
At the COP24 talks, delegates have clashed over financing, with poorer countries most affected by climate change demanding recognition of the damage that it causes and long-term financial support.
There is also a dispute over whether to issue a firmer commitment to the prevention of warming by more than 1.5 degrees.
Another point of contention is the topic of damages and losses due to climate change, with poorer and harder-hit states fighting for it to be its own category in the final report. Industrial nations, however, fear that it could make them liable for damages elsewhere.
Ethiopian Gebru Jember Endalew, spokesman for the group of poorest countries, called for researchers’ warnings to be taken seriously. “I represent a billion of the people who are most hurt by climate change. We demand justice in order to survive. We are not responsible for the catastrophe that threatens us all.”
A report from the Global Carbon Project revealed last week that greenhouse-gas emissions in 2018 were projected to rise by at least 2 per cent. This was the latest of several reports, the most notable of which was the UN IPCC report, which showed that it was unlikely that the world would be able to prevent global warming from stopping at the 1.5-degree mark. — DPA

Teresa Dapp and Torsten Holtz