After a high-profile start last week, that featured 150 heads of states, the international climate change summit atParis entered its 'high-level' segment on Monday and environment ministers from across the developed and developing world led discussions in groups based on the most pressing issues. Almost all of these discussions occurred behind closed doors and after the first-week of negotiations, on the draft text of the climate change agreement, the onus now lies on the ministers to resolve contentious issues.
The on-going international climate change summit has been termed as a 'do-or-die' chance for tackling global warming and to arrive at a legally binding treaty to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius.
At the end of first-week's negotiations on the draft text of the climate change agreement, differences remained over 900 issues. The areas of disagreement are signified in square brackets. According to civil society observers present in Paris finance, technology transfers, differentiated responsibility, pre-2020 action plan and compensation for loss due to natural calamities were the most contentious issues at the summit.
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who is the President of the summit, has created four different groups to sort out these contentious issues and each group is headed by two ministers, one each belonging to the developed and developing group of nations, civil society observers said. Union minister for environment, forests and climate change Prakash Javadekar will be present at these group negotiations along with his team of negotiators.
"The (environment) ministers have a mountain to climb in the coming days and the discussions will happen behind closed doors. For India, the issues of finance, technology and equity are some of the most important ones", said Harjeet Singh, International Climate Policy Manager, ActionAid International from Paris.
At the beginning of the Paris summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had highlighted the issues of equity and differentiated responsibility and had even said that India is not responsible for climate change and that developed nations should take the lead. But, throughout first-week of negotiations the United States of America has quietly but firmly rejected the differentiated responsibility, sources said.
Along with other developed nations the US has argued that countries such as India, Braziland South Africa are emerging economies and thus, they should bear as much responsibility as others. Even as differences over contentious issues remain, observers also said that the summit could go on beyond its deadline of December 11. "The ministerial negotiations are yet to pick up pace and it is quite possible that the negotiations may go on ahead of the schedule", said a civil society observer on the condition of anonymity.
