Live
Audio Only
Negotiators at the climate change summit in Paris have decided to extend the conference until Saturday in hope that a universally binding agreement between the participating nations can be met.
It is thought world leaders worked into the night Thursday with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in an attempt to finalize the climate change pact that is due come into effect by 2020, although a final date has yet to be agreed.
Delegates in Paris are still debating several issues such as payment to countries affected by climate change while one of the world's largest polluters, China, is thought to have rejected some proposals.
"Things are moving in the right direction," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is also president of the COP21, on the final push of the negotiations.
While Ban Ki-moon appealed to the parties concerned to “take a final decision for humanity” and described the 27-page draft text "a good basis" for a deal to help avert more powerful storms, droughts, and desertification and rising sea levels.
Newsletter
Ban Ki Moon "I am convinced that negociatiors will reach a strong and ambitious agreement" #COP21 pic.twitter.com/5tt1ZIOG2t
— COP21en (@COP21en)
diciembre 11, 2015
It is believed the presidency of the COP21 presented a draft agreement which proposes to cap the global warming temperature at "well below 2 degrees (Celsius)" by seeing a peak in the "emissions of greenhouse gases as soon as possible."
The pact also requires greater commitment from industrialized to do more to reduce the short-term emissions of greenhouse gases.
While COP21 leaders want to increase financial aid given to developing nations from richer countries to fund environmental policies. After the 2009 summit, USD$100 billion was pledged to poor nations to help them hit environmental targets.
However, some analysts say that more cooperation between the nations is needed and have warned that Paris could could become another failure like the one experienced in 2009 during the COP15 in Copenhagen.
Manuel Criollo from the the U.S. based labor rights and environmental change campaign group, the Strategy Center, described the faltering negotiations as a “tragic climate chess game.”
Criollo also told teleSUR that the plans to reduce the climate change temperature to 1.5⁰C is one main stumbling blocks of the ongoing talks in Paris.
“As negotiations move forward the details of the draft would render this important threshold a toothless and unenforceable goal and worst it would attempt to circumvent the idea of what been called ‘loss and damages’ (UN talk to say climate reparations),” he said Friday.
While Kevin Anderson an environmentalist for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in the U.K., said the current proposal is even weaker than the document that emerged from the much maligned Copenhagen conference.
“Calling for a peaking of CO2 levels 'as soon as possible' is not scientifically robust. The text is somewhere between dangerous and deadly for vulnerable nations” he said on the proposals Friday.
VIDEO: COP21 Agreement Nears Completion, But Pending Issues Remain
