World leaders to meet in Paris to reach global climate deal

More than 80 world leaders are due to attend the opening, to give the talks political impetus. They hope to build on various national plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020.

In the second week, ministers will arrive to hammer out anticipated sticking points, such as finance and a mechanism for addressing “loss and damage” from climate change, such as displacement due to rising seas.

Experts believe that the last failed attempt to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen in 2009 means most countries – rich and poor – have suffered some tragedy or harm from extreme weather, which will hopefully boost the political drive in Paris.

The French capital will also be the setting for thousands of ordinary people marching to demand greater action on climate change, as well as hundreds of businesses, non-governmental groups and city officials showcasing their efforts to slow global warming and deal with its impact around the world.

Whatever is agreed at the Paris conference, the six-year process leading up to it has resulted in 155 governments submitting national climate action plans for the coming decades – including 114 developing countries.

That in itself is a huge achievement, analysts say.

By the time the summit starts, countries that produce 92 percent of the greenhouse gases warming the world are expected to have produced national plans to curb their emissions and adapt to climate change, experts said at a meeting in London in October.

But those plans, if fully implemented, would only hold global temperature rises by the end of the century to around 2.7 degrees Celsius, still well above the 1.5 to 2 degrees maximum most countries are aiming for, the experts said.

Last year was the warmest since records began in the 19th century and average world temperatures have already risen by about 0.85C (1.5F), raising the risk of heat waves, floods and rising world sea levels as polar ice melts.

Experts say that all countries, rich and poor, need to play a part in curbing planet-warming emissions by moving away from dirty energy sources and protecting their people from climate change impacts.

With China now the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, and India fourth after the United States and the European Union, efforts by major emerging economies to develop in a greener way are a centrepiece of the new accord now being stitched together.

But, an analysis of the national climate action plans, released in October by the U.N. climate change secretariat, found that a quarter of the emissions reductions pledged are conditional on receiving financial and technical support to make them happen.

Expertise in preventing floods or building solar power systems is increasingly being shared across borders in the southern hemisphere, as well as between the north and south – along with funding to put those ideas into practice.

China, for example, recently promised ¥20 billion ($3.1 billion) to establish a fund that will assist developing countries in combating climate change.

And some developing nations, including Peru and Colombia, have made contributions to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which will finance efforts to adapt to and curb climate change in poorer countries.

Such moves have begun to break down the traditional division between rich donor governments and recipient states, but the rhetoric in the negotiating rooms often fails to reflect this, experts say.

Until wealthy governments clarify how they will make good on a promise to mobilise $100 billion a year in climate change funding for vulnerable nations by 2020 – and how it will be scaled up after that – the G77 and China group of developing countries is expected to continue using finance as a bargaining chip at the U.N. talks.

Wrangling is likely over the definition of which countries should – or could – provide climate finance, and to which vulnerable states.

Even developing nations that are willing to put money on the table do not want to be bound by the same accounting and reporting rules as their richer counterparts, experts have noted.

The complex U.N. process and the tough challenge of getting some 195 countries to agree on limiting environmental damage – for which some are more responsible than others – mean negotiators, many of them government officials, will be unable to get the job finished in Paris themselves.