Delegates from about 190 countries agreed to continue negotiating the content of a global pact to be finalised in Paris in 2015. But independent observers in Lima said countries failed to agree on some key contentious points on ways to protect the world from severe impacts of climate change.

The pact expected to emerge in Paris is intended to outline actions that the developed and developing countries will have to take beyond 2020 to reduce and curb the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to avert a rise in the average global temperature beyond 2ºC.

"We're happy the negotiated statement in Lima has addressed the concerns of developing countries," India's environment minister Prakash Javadekar said after the talks ended early today. "It gives enough space for the developing world to grow and take appropriate nationally determined steps."

During the negotiations, the Indian delegation led by Javadekar had opposed any scrutiny and analysis of domestically determined actions to curb GHG emissions ahead of the Paris meeting next year.

"The provision of this ex-ante review of even developing countries has been removed," Javadekar said. "The final draft has also clearly mandated the developed world to take more firm financial commitments to scale up to $100 billion from 2020."

But environmental activists tracking the talks said contentious points remain unresolved.

"Working out how to fairly share the workload of tackling climate change between the developed and developing countries has become the major stumbling block on the road to Paris," Mohamed Adow, a senior climate advisor at Christain Aid, an international development charity, said in a media release.

Many observers are also unhappy the negotiators in Lima failed to agree on plans to cut emissions during the period 2015 to 2020 that they say could have laid foundations for accelerated expansion of renewable energy.

"The science is clear - delaying action until 2020 will make it near-impossible to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," Samantha Smith, the leader of the World Wild Fund's Global Climate and Energy Initiative. "Yet political expediency won over scientific urgency."

A conference observer from India's non-government Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, said the agreement that emerged from Lima has widened the trust gap between the developed and developing countries and only "postpones the inevitable big fight" in the run-up to the Paris 2015 meeting.

"The developed countries have not pledged to reduce their GHG emissions from now until 2020," said Chandra Bhushan, CSE's deputy director-general. "They have also not given any concrete assurance to provide finance and technology to the developing countries."

Under earlier agreements signed at climate change conferences, the developed countries had pledged to provide funds and technologies to help developing countries pursue clean energy growth pathways and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Under the Lima agreement, Bhushan said, every country can decide how they want to reduce or curb their own GHG emissions, without facing global scrutiny ahead of the Paris conference whether their pledges efforts are fair or ambitious.

"No questions will be asked, none answered," Bhushan said in a media release issued by the CSE.

The CSE has said India has "neither gained nor lost anything in the short-term" from the outcome in Lima, but cautioned that India is likely to lose in the long-term because of the absence of strong GHG reduction commitments from the developed countries and because Paris is likely to throw up a weak climate deal.

Scientists believe a weak climate change pact next year will place the world on a trajectory that will cause the average global temperatures to rise between 3º-4º in the coming decades. Such levels of global warming are likely to intensify extreme weather events, hurt agriculture and human health, melt glaciers, and a rise in sea levels.