World leaders pledge to limit global warming to 1.5 C Add to ...
Shawn McCarthy and Eric Reguly
PARIS — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015 4:14PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015 4:24PM EST
The world’s governments pledge to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 C and to respect human rights and the right of indigenous people when taking action to address climate change in a draft text tabled Thursday that would form the basis of a United Nations climate change accord.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius planned to work late into the night with negotiators from 195 countries, hoping to reach agreement on key differences that remain, including questions of ambition, financing and differentiation between the obligations of developed and developing nations.
He urged the negotiators not to let their national priorities get in the way of a deal that would benefit the entire world. “Compromise does require us to forget the ideal solution,” he said. “It’s time to come to an agreement.”
The draft text also would “invite” countries to update their emission-reduction targets by 2020, and to do so every five years thereafter.
Some 180 countries have submitted to the United Nations plans to reduce and limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their so-called nationally determined contributions. But those commitments fall short of the longstanding pledge to keep average global temperatures from rising less than 2-degrees above per-industrial levels, let alone the new goal of 1.5 C.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna helped lead the charge on the 1.5-degree pledge earlier this week, indicating in one of her first interventions in the negotiating sessions that the Canadian government would support such an aspirational goal.
Ms. McKenna also intervened on Wednesday night to express concerns that there was no agreement on human rights and the rights of indigenous people.
Several developing nations – including the Philippines – are also pushing to have the agreement contain statements that implementation of the agreement must be done in a manner consistent with respect for such rights. One concrete concern: that the effort to reverse deforestation in tropical countries could push subsidence farmers off their land.
The Liberal government has put aboriginal rights high on its agenda as it begins to govern following the October election. And Ms. McKenna has said Ottawa will consult with First Nations leaders, as well as provinces and territories, as the government looks to forge a national climate strategy that will respect the goals of any deal reached in Paris.
At a session earlier Thursday, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said that, after Paris, the governments will have connect the “nice words” contained in the agreement with concrete action needed the limit global warming to less than 2-degrees Celsius above per-industrial levels.
“I think we have to confront the fact that the political process that is underway is very different from the real world process that’s needed for decarbonisation,” said Mr. Sachs, who also serves as director of the United Nations’ sustainable solutions network.
A Paris agreement “will not make it happen; it will just leave the door open to having a chance to have it happen,” he said.
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