UN climate conference adopts Paris rulebook

Nearly 200 nations on Saturday agreed to enforce rules on implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Marked by day-long negotiations, the second extended day of the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP24, in the Polish city of Katowice, saw the rulebook being adopted unanimously.

The Paris deal will come into force in 2020.

The guidelines known as Paris rulebook will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change.

"All nations have worked tirelessly. All nations showed their commitment. All nations can leave Katowice with a sense of pride, knowing that their efforts have paid off," said COP24 President Michal Kurtyka, adding, "the guidelines contained in the Katowice Climate Package provide the basis for implementing the agreement as of 2020.

Earlier, the climate change conference was locked in a stalemate over a number of contentious issues relating to finance, loss and damage, and creation of a new carbon trading market, even as it went into an extra day on Saturday.

The two-week-long climate negotiations were scheduled to conclude on Friday, but negotiators had been unable to stitch together an agreement despite endless rounds of negotiations and back-room diplomacy.

Since Friday, the main plenary, which took the final decision on the Paris rulebook, had been deferred on several occasions, with negotiators spending the entire night in informal discussions with their counterparts.

(Vishal Gulati is in Katowice at the invitation of Climate Trends to cover the 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP24. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

--IANS

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