Warsaw: Environment ministers from around the world including India on Friday began a final push at the UN climate summit to lay the groundwork for a deal that is expected to be in place in two years to tackle global warming.
Ahead of Friday’s concluding session, negotiators had worked late into the night to try and find some common ground on who needs to do what to meet the UN-backed goal of curbing average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.
Meanwhile, France was officially named as the host of the 2015 conference designed to seal a deal. The designation of France was approved under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
On Wednesday, environment and developmental observer groups walked out of negotiations, saying the annual round of talks had produced little more than hot air since opening on 11 November, and was “on track to deliver virtually nothing”.
India fully shared the sentiments of the civil society and asked the developed nations to act in combating climate change.
“It is a matter of deep concern to my country that there has been absolutely no progress in any of the issues of interest to developing countries in this conference of parties,” environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan said.
“Discussions on crucial issues of direct importance to developing countries like finance, technology and loss and damage have remained deadlocked due to lack of will by developed country parties,” she said in a statement.
The ongoing Cop 19 conference at the Polish capital is scheduled to close by 1700 GMT (2230 IST) on Friday, but many are bracing themselves for another late night’s work. The current gathering of more than 190 nations is meant to pave the way to a pact by the end of 2015 to limit global warming by taming carbon gases emitted by burning coal, oil and gas.
On current emissions trends, scientists warn the Earth could face warming of 4 degrees Celsius or higher—a recipe for catastrophic storms, droughts, floods and land-gobbling sea-level rise. But developed and developing nations are at loggerheads over sharing responsibility for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Developing countries want wealthy nations to shoulder a bigger share of emissions cuts to make up for a long history of fossil-fuel combustion. The rich nations, however, insists that emerging economies must do their fair share. China is now the world’s biggest emitter of CO2, with India in fourth place after the US and Europe.
Another point of contention is money. Developing nations are challenging wealthy countries to show how they intend to honour a 2009 pledge to muster up to $100 billion (€74 billion) by 2020, up from $10 billion a year from 2010 to 2012.
