CSE says Poland rule book 'weak', 'completely insufficient'

A leading Indian environment advocacy group on Sunday termed as "weak" and "completely insufficient" a common rule book designed by diplomats from across the world after UN marathon negotiations here to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius.

Diplomats from nearly 200 countries finalised the rule book to breathe life into the 2015 Paris climate deal after several round of talks that failed to match the ambition the world's most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

The rulebook of the Paris Agreement will be the guidelines that will define how climate action is implemented, and accounted for, Post 2020.

"It is a weak rule book that we have got for implementation of the Paris Agreement. This rule book is completely insufficient to drive ambitious climate action," said Chandra Bhushan, the deputy director general of New Delhi-based advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

The CSE has been closely tracking the negotiations at the 24th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) in Katowice, Poland.

The Katowice COP also failed to increase ambition of countries to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases as per the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 degree Celsius, Bhushan said.

The refusal of the CoP to take the IPCC report seriously undermines the Paris Agreement, he said.

The IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degree Celsius makes it clear that the 2 degree Celsius threshold referred to in the Paris Agreement is more dangerous than previously thought, and that unprecedented economic transformations are needed in the next decade to keep warming under the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark.

"The Katowice CoP will be remembered as an anti-science CoP for its failure to take into account the findings of the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5 degree Celsius. It will also be remembered for coming out with a rule book that dilutes an already weak Paris Agreement, thereby undermining the global effort to combat climate change," Bhushan added.