Agreement Reached On Draft Climate Accord, UN Says

LE BOURGET, France: After almost two weeks of marathon negotiations, the lines for food and coffee Friday night snaked through the temporary tent city here that has been home to the global climate talks. People made final bets in a 5-euro pool on the precise hour the talks might conclude.

Others, needing to recharge for the final stretch of negotiations that may well run nonstop until Sunday, jockeyed for spots on couches in the lounges.

The goal here is a daunting one: to get 195 countries plus the European Union to agree, for the first time, on a deal that would start reducing the risks of climate change by cutting their use of fossil fuels that create dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.

Early Saturday morning, United Nations officials said they had reached agreement overnight on new language for the final draft of the pact, which would be released publicly at 11:30 a.m. Paris time. The officials also said that the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, hoped to bring that text up for a final approval by Saturday afternoon.

The previous draft, released Thursday night, had left some important players unhappy. The language of crucial provisions remained the focus of contentious negotiations, and where the diplomats ended up - using the word "shall" versus "should," for example - could carry enormous consequences.

The diplomats were working through sharp divides between rich and poor countries, including the idea that only rich, developed economies such as the United States should take action to cut emissions, while developing economies, such as India and China, should be exempt.

One crucial question is how emissions cuts will be monitored and verified. The United States, the European Union and wealthy countries have pushed for an aggressive system that would apply to all countries. Developing countries like India have insisted on a less stringent system.

Developing nations were also pushing for language that would require rich countries to ramp up spending to help poor countries adapt to the ravages of climate change, including increased floods, droughts and devastating storms.

"What we are striving for is a just and equitable accord from Paris," said Prakash Javadekar, the Indian environment minister, who has been a vocal opponent of the United States' push for aggressive transparency measures.

"But unfortunately, the developed world is not accommodating and is not showing flexibility," he added. "There is need that they should show more flexibility and that they should be more accommodating to the concerns of the developing world and poor countries."

The draft released Thursday night included a number of tough environmental provisions, including a requirement that countries reconvene in 2020 and every five years after that with new plans that would ratchet up the stringency of their emissions reductions.

Environmental groups praised that provision, which is seen by many as the core of the document, since it would create a permanent system for reducing emissions over coming decades. It represents a crucial compromise, since many developing nations had pushed for a longer, 10-year cycle.

But after diplomats worked through Thursday night and early Friday morning until about 5:45, Fabius said the group could not meet a Friday afternoon deadline to complete the pact.

He said he would release a proposed final text on Saturday morning, which was likely to mean an all-night negotiating session on Friday to complete the text.

Diplomats - many of whom were operating on about three hours of sleep after Thursday's negotiations - shuttled between temporary delegation offices for bilateral meetings.

Fabius was meeting with dozens of diplomats personally, and was brokering one-on-one meetings between adversaries, such as oil states like Saudi Arabia and vulnerable nations like the Marshall Islands.

The United States was putting its shoulder to the effort to complete an ambitious climate change deal. Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who has led the American negotiators, hope to make climate-change policy a cornerstone of their legacies.

While home in Washington and focused on the deadly terrorist attack in California, Obama has nonetheless tracked the talks closely.

He spoke by phone with President Xi Jinping of China on Friday, and the leaders, whose countries have the two most polluting economies, committed to pushing their negotiating teams to work closely together, according to White House officials. Obama also talked by phone this week with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil.

But late this week some negotiators expressed concern about the pact as drafted. At a packed news conference with ministers from Germany, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Norway and other countries, Tony de Brum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands and the leader of an informal "high-ambition coalition" that includes the United States and the European Union, announced that certain countries - he would not specify which - were trying to water down provisions on monitoring, reporting and verifying emissions targets.

De Brum said: "We come again to sound a clarion call to the world, to raise our voices and say: We will not accept deletions. We are not here to accept a minimalist agreement. This is our red line."
The support of every nation, no matter how small or poor, is required for approval of the pact.

When a final text of the proposed accord is brought before the plenary session, now called for Saturday afternoon, the presiding official will present it to the delegates for consent. If a single country objects, the deal will die.

That is exactly what happened in 2009 in Copenhagen, when a handful of countries objected to a deal that had the approval of most of the world.

Despite the current disagreements, negotiators say they are hopeful these climate talks will be the first to end in success.

"There are many challenges. There are things I don't think are wise to put in the text. But there can still be flexibility," said Zou Ji, a Chinese negotiator. "But I am optimistic - more optimistic than I have been in the past. We will reach a deal."

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, has organized climate talks each year and sees this session as by far the most important.

"I am urging and appealing to all the state parties to take the final decision for humanity," he said.