Negotiating text for Paris climate summit formalised

The negotiating text for the UN climate summit in Paris later this year was formalised Friday after week-long deliberations, the UN climate change body announced.

The first round of UN climate talks this year which started here Feb 8 included delegations from over 190 parties, according to a Xinhua report. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) described the preparation of the negotiating text for the Paris climate summit as "a key milestone towards a new, universal agreement on climate change".

Having initially aimed at streamlining the Lima document, which was created in December 2014, the negotiators ended up with a hefty 86-page text, which would be the basis for negotiations over the next few months leading up to the Paris meeting.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, told reporters that no matter how many pages the text had, the negotiators were able to move forward from the "informal draft that came out of Lima (climate conference)" to the "formal negotiating text".

Figueres said that a formal negotiating text was now in place, which contained the views and concerns of all parties and was constructed under full transparency, with parties now aware of each other's positions.

The negotiating text covers contents ranging from climate change mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity-building.

This blueprint of options and ideas for the new global climate agreement would be translated into the UN's six official languages and then circulated to all the parties in the first quarter of 2015, the UNFCCC said.

According to Figueres, this fulfills the internationally-accepted timetable for reaching a possible climate treaty, thus making it feasible for a legal instrument to be adopted in Paris. However, the text as it stood, did not set the possibility in stone, she said.

As noted by the UNFCCC, the next step is for negotiators to reach consensus on the content of the new climate deal. Formal work and negotiations on the text will continue in Bonn, Germany in June with two further formal sessions planned for later this year.

The latest climate meeting in Geneva was convened by the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) with the UN climate change body, which is the negotiating body tasked with putting together the Paris agreement.