Nearly 200 countries, assembled in the city of Katowice in Poland, early this morning agreed upon, and adopted, a rulebook to implement Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 global pact to fight climate change.
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The Paris Agreement, which will start getting implemented from 2020, replacing the existing Kyoto Protocol, seeks to keep the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The finalisation of the rulebook, the main agenda of the two-week year-ending climate change conference, came after discussions over one of its key elements — governance of a new market mechanism for trading of carbon emissions — had to be deferred for next year. The deferment was forced because the strong disagreements on some provisions, between Brazil and the developed world, which had stalled negotiations for two days and delayed the final outcome by more than 24 hours, could not be reconciled.
The agreement over the 133-page rulebook received a mixed response from governments and observers. While welcoming the finalisation of the rulebook, India and many other developing countries rued the fact that the “balance” that they would have liked to see in the agreement was missing.
“…To some extent, we are seeing a mitigation-centric regime in the making with the urgent adaptation needs of the developing countries relegated to a second-class status. We also sense that there is a fear that we might be creating a regime which ignores, to some extent, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities which is very important to our countries,” Egypt said while making the statement for G77 plus China, the largest negotiating group at the climate talks, of which India is also a member.
“We believe that the opportunity to fix some of the ailments that we still see in the regime that is being constructed is still before us. ..We must not gloss over the real differences between the developed and developing countries, both in responsibility and capability. We need to find a better way of doing this together. We still have a great chance to shift course,” Egypt said.