The political support for a deal is broader and deeper than ever before. But the real crunch comes in October, when the IMF and the World Bank Group meet to assess progress towards the $100bn of climate aid
The chances of a deal at the Paris climate change summit that starts on 30 November look better than anyone might have thought possible even a year ago. But if success seems more likely than failure, failure – as President François Hollande warned last week – is still possible. The negotiations on the text that have been going on in Bonn were supposed to be nearly complete, but progress has been slow and possibly insufficient. Only this morning the UN’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, warned that the targets for carbon emission reduction that 62 nations which account for 70% of emissions have so far submitted for agreement in Paris are not good enough to keep global warming below 2C.
All the same, the mere fact of nationally rather than globally agreed targets marks an important innovation. In total, targets covering 85% of emissions are expected. That would be enough to prevent global warming reaching catastrophic levels. It is the start of a process, and that is one of the things that makes the framework for a deal very different from the failed attempts at Copenhagen six years ago. Then, the developed world was being asked to bear the costs both of moving to a low-carbon economy and of mitigating the impacts of climate change; the US still lacked a climate change policy; and the fastest-growing polluters, China and India, did not take part.
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Source: Guardian Environment