'Flexibility' call to reach UN climate consensus

The Chilean official leading UN climate negotiations has appealed to delegates to show flexibility, as they struggle to reach agreement on crucial measures needed to tackle climate change.

As talks continue in Madrid, Carolina Schmidt said a deal was almost there but the outcome needed to be ambitious.

The situation was unprecedented since talks began in 1991, said Alden Meyer from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The goal is a commitment to new carbon emissions cuts by the end of 2020.

The European Union and small island states vulnerable to climate change are pushing for stronger commitments to cut those emissions. Some of the biggest polluters, including the United States, Brazil and India, say they see no need to change their current plans.

Ms Schmidt, Chile's environment minister who is the conference's president, said early on Sunday: "I request all the flexibility, all your strength to find this agreement to have an ambitious result."

She added: "It's hard, it's difficult but it's worth it. I specially need you. But people in our countries need us."

On Saturday, a new draft text from the meeting was released, designed to chart a way forward for the parties to the Paris agreement, which came into being in 2015.

The pact's intention is to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 2C. This was regarded at the time as the threshold for dangerous global warming, though scientists subsequently shifted the definition of the "safe" limit to a rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
But Mr Meyer commented: "The latest version of the Paris Agreement decision text put forward by the Chilean presidency is totally unacceptable. It has no call for countries to enhance the ambition of their emissions reduction commitments.

"If world leaders fail to increase ambition in the lead up to next year's climate summit in Glasgow, they will make the task of meeting the Paris agreement's 'well below 2C' temperature limitation goal - much less the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal - almost impossible."

Source: BBC

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