Another round of UN climate talks wrapped up today after making little headway towards producing a text for a worldwide pact due in just six months' time.
After 11 days of wrangling by negotiators, the co-chairs of the 195-nation process said they had been asked to take matters in hand.
In the coming months, they will strive to boil down a sprawling document to a set of manageable options ahead of a November 30-December 11 climate conference in Paris.
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"You will have by the end of October the draft package," co-chairman Ahmed Djoghlaf of Algeria told journalists, referring to a core political agreement backed by a set of technical decisions.
The Paris accord is supposed to unite the world behind an endeavour to save future generations from disastrous climate change.
The draft coalesces around the goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
That is a figure scientists say offers a good chance of avoiding catastrophic damage to Earth's climate system and a future darkened by ever-worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.
Taking effect from 2020, the accord will be enacted by voluntary national pledges to curb greenhouse gases -- the emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, that are driving the warming phenomenon.
But beyond the 2 C target and the roster of carbon pledges, the draft text is laden with wide and politically explosive differences.
They include clauses on how to ratchet up pledges, through regular reviews, to ensure Earth is on track for 2 C.
Also undetermined is how rich countries will muster USD 100 billion (88 billion euros) annually in climate aid for poor countries.
Even the agreement's legal status remains undecided.
Thorny issues like these will be left to ministers or heads of state or government to settle.
But veterans of the 23-year climate process say the high-stakes bartering is only feasible if politicians are handed a manageable text.
In Bonn, negotiators crawled over a text of nearly 90 pages that combined every national viewpoint.
They weeded out areas of duplication and strengthened areas of agreement, succeeding in reducing the volume by about 10 percent.
But they did not address any of the big issues.
