UN climate change talks avoid contentious issues in draft agreement
Source: The Guardian
UN climate change talks avoid contentious issues in draft agreement
Struggles remain on enacting 2015 Paris accord despite more clarity on emissions
Fiona Harvey in Katowice
Sat 15 Dec 2018 12.39 GMT
The UN met on Saturday in Poland to discuss a draft agreement on climate change, which sources said was likely to pass, as exhausted delegates made compromises on some key issues but left other contentious problems to be resolved next year.
The result will not be the breakthrough campaigners and some countries were hoping for, but will keep discussions alive on formulating key aspects of the implementation rules for the 2015 Paris accord.
Delegates have been thrashing out a text on the complex mechanisms required to put the Paris goals into effect for the past two weeks, and appeared partly successful as the talks overran their Friday deadline and looked likely to continue into late afternoon on Saturday at least.
The text will give countries clarity on key points such as accounting for their greenhouse gas emissions and recording their carbon reductions. They will also go some way to encourage the stepping up of each country’s climate change efforts.
Among the issues holding up progress is the highly technical question of what should happen to the market for carbon credits, held by some countries in recognition of their emissions-cutting efforts and their carbon sinks, such as forests.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/15/un-climate-change-talks-postpone-contentious-issues-with-draft-agreement
