Heads of the
delegations, including China’s representative Xie Zhenhua (second left, front
row), mark the end of the final session of the United Nations summit on
climate change in Katowice, Poland, on Saturday. [Photo/Agencies]
After
two weeks of heated discussions in Katowice, Poland, negotiators from about 200
countries on Saturday agreed on universal and transparent rules that will
govern future efforts to tackle climate change.
While
the differences between the South and the North have been, to some extent,
narrowed, more ambitious plans have yet to be made despite recent reports that
stressed the hazards of global warming.
The
24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, or COP24, was tasked with finalizing the implementation
guidelines for the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. It was scheduled to run
from Dec 2 to Friday, but was prolonged due to intensive talks among delegates.
“This
was not an easy task. It was hard and daunting, but we pushed it through,” said
Michal Kurtyka, COP24 president, adding, “Through this package, you have made a
thousand little steps forward together.”
Kurtyka,
who is also state secretary of Poland’s Ministry of Energy, said, “We will all
have to give in order to gain.”
Xie
Zhenhua, China’s special representative on climate change affairs, said the
comprehensive, balanced and strong package of guidelines laid a policy
foundation for implementing the Paris agreement.
With
a consensus on the principal of common but differentiated responsibilities, as
included in the Paris agreement, North and South countries, however, disagreed
on how to embody principles in the implementation text.
While
some developed countries argued that the South should increase transparency in
fulfilling their Nationally Determined Contributions, or pledges each country
made for post-2020 emission reduction targets, delegates from the developing
world said they lack the capability and should be offered more financial
assistance.
The
Katowice package includes guidelines that will put into operation a more
transparent framework. It sets out how countries will provide information about
their NDCs. This information includes mitigation and adaptation measures as
well as details of financial support for climate action in developing
countries, according to the UN framework.
The
package also includes guidelines related to the process of establishing new
financing targets from 2025 onward to follow from the current target of
mobilizing $100 billion per year from 2020 to support developing countries, it
added.
“The
guidelines that delegations have been working on day and night are balanced and
clearly reflect how responsibilities are distributed among the world’s
nations,” Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s climate chief, was quoted as saying in a
UNFCCC media release.
“This
is an excellent achievement. The multilateral system has delivered a solid
result. This is a road map for the international community to decisively
address climate change,” she added.
Challenges
remain
With
regard to a recent UN report that warns of the risk of global warming,
oil-exporting countries differed in their opinions with small island states —
ones that are most vulnerable to the climatological phenomena.
In
October, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special
report that highlighted a number of outcomes that could be avoided by limiting
global warming to 1.5 C, instead of the 2 C goal set in the Paris agreement.
The
report concluded that it requires a dramatic overhaul of the global economy,
including a shift away from fossil fuels, to maintain global warming below 1.5
C by the end of the century.
Alarmed
by efforts to include this in the final text of COP24, some oil-exporting
nations, including the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, blocked
an endorsement of the IPCC report midway through negotiations, which triggered
uproar from small island nations and environmental groups.
As
a compromise, the final COP24 text merely welcomes the “timely completion” of
the report rather than its conclusions. Negotiators, however, agreed to discuss
more ambitious plans at a UN summit in New York in September.
Parties
also failed to reach consensus on the use of cooperative approaches so that
countries could meet a part of their domestic mitigation goals through the use
of so-called “market mechanisms”, according to the UN framwork.
“From
the beginning of the COP, it very quickly became clear that this was one area
that still required much work and that details to operationalize this part of
the Paris agreement had not yet been sufficiently explored,” said Espinosa.
“After
many rich exchanges and constructive discussions, a great majority of countries
were willing to agree and include the guidelines to operationalize market mechanisms
in the overall package”, she said.
“Unfortunately,
in the end, the differences could not be overcome,” she added.
Countries
have agreed to finalize details for market mechanisms at next year’s UN climate
change conference, which is scheduled to take place in Chile.
AP
contributed to this story.