PARIS: A final draft text, carrying all the contentious proposals from both the rich and the developing nations, of the climate agreement was released on Saturday. It will now be left for the ministers to take a final call on the issues during the high-level segment of the summit, beginning Monday.
Though the draft has been streamlined a bit in the past two days, various proposals of different countries and groups that are there as brackets in the draft, will now need high-level diplomatic intervention.
Whether it is the contentious issue of climate finance, common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) - which holds rich nations responsible for their historical emission and therefore seeks their actions\interventions to fight challenges of climate change - or the review and monitoring mechanism of the proposed agreement, each issue will now see an intense debate next week.
This draft climate agreement will now be the basis for negotiations for ministers. India will be represented by the country's environment, forests and climate change minister Prakash Javadekar.
The French presidency will assume the leadership of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) and negotiators of 196 countries will work through five days next week to hopefully sign the agreement on December 11.
Stating India's position, a key Indian negotiator told the TOI that the country wants the CBDR to be retained fully in the Paris agreement because that is the one core principle of the UN convention.
"It means the differentiation must exist under each article whether it is mitigation, adaptation, finance or technology transfer. We have already inserted that formulation in each of these pillars in the draft text", he said.
Meanwhile, India's former environment minister Jairam Ramesh here outlined three quintessential - commitments (to implement INDC), MRV (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification) of INDC and rolling out of new generation of INDCs -- for the success of COP21 in Paris.
Speaking at the two-day GLOBE COP21 Legislators Summit in the National Assembly here in the French capital, Ramesh said, "The INDCs are a bottom up process, but there must be a commitment in Paris to have a new generation of INDCs in five years from now, because these INDCs, submitted by countries ahead of COP21, is not going to be sufficient to meet the 2 degree celsius target.
"We know that no country is going to unveil new INDCs in Paris, but what every country must undertake in Paris is to review the current portfolio of INDCs may be five years from now, revisit what it can do to increase the level of ambition of what it can do. "
The theme of the GLOBE Summit was "Towards Coherence and Impact: The Challenge of Paris and the Post-2015 agenda for a prosperous and sustainable world." It was attended by about 221 legislators from 67 countries.
Apart from Ramesh, Indian participants included, MPs and GLOBE India representatives Bhubaneswar Kalita, Prem Das Rai, Sanjay Jaiswal and Nagaland MLA Mmhonlumo Kikon.
