Nations meeting for a UN climate conference in the Polish city of Katowice look unlikely to meet the Friday deadline to produce the final agreement due to remaining differences, Luxembourg Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg told Sputnik.
KATOWICE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th December, 2018) Nations meeting for a UN climate conference in the Polish city of Katowice look unlikely to meet the Friday deadline to produce the final agreement due to remaining differences, Luxembourg Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg told Sputnik."We will need more time but for me this is not surprising because the rulebook is really an important thing because it will make operational the Paris Agreement. So it's a very important step and I think we have also different views on how ambitious it should be," Dieschbourg said.
The Katowice deal follows up on the historic 2015 Paris agreement that set a path to keeping the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
Dieschbourg said the deal was very detailed and technical but the discussion, underway since December 2, had eventually turned to politics.
A debate has been going on around recognizing in the final document the importance of a report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which seeks curbing global warming to 1.5 degrees. The United States opposes this, Dieschbourg said.
"For us it is of extreme importance that we see the IPCC report on the 1.5 and that we are acting in accordance to science, that we have more ambition - I think this is an absolutely necessary message ... We are trying to reach out to the Presidency in order to encourage them to be more ambitious in what they present us," she explained.
In a speech on Wednesday, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned participating nations they no longer had the luxury of time, urging them to finalize their work in Katowice by Friday in order to "immediately unleash the full potential" of the Paris deal.
