Climate talks end in compromise

Climate talks end in compromise The longest United Nations climate talks on record ended in Madrid, Spain, with a compromise deal.

The talks stretched into record overtime before negotiators managed to seal a vague agreement in a last-ditch effort.

Negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP 25, finally agreed last week to a deal aimed at averting a global warming disaster, though the deal pushed key decisions to a future date.

The marathon talks extended more than 36 hours past the expected conclusion, making COP 25 the longest UN climate conference to date.

The final agreement was far from the bold call to action that climate protection proponents had hoped for, however.

Briefing the media on COP 25, environment minister Pohamba Shifeta said negotiators battled to reach an agreement.

“COP25 was one of the longest on record after it concluded on 15 December instead of 13 December as scheduled,” said Shifeta.

He said the core objective of COP25 was to finalise the implementation modalities that will govern the Paris Agreement.

According to him, many of these guidelines were established at last year's negotiations, COP 24, where the Katowice climate package was agreed.

“However, a critical area was left undecided.”

The final draft agreement acknowledged the “significant gap” between existing pledges and temperature goals set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Countries failed to establish market rules for trading carbon credits, considered one of the most contentious issues at the conference.

Another big miss was figuring out how to fund poorer countries to mitigate damage caused by climate change.

The final agreement urged all 200 participant countries to honour climate targets and make progress towards them over the next year.

Shifeta said Rule 16 of the UN climate process was applied to push the discussions to the next inter-sessional meeting in Bonn in June 2020 and COP 26 in Glasgow, UK to finalise these important guidelines.

He said sessions will be held in between to work on the guidelines and expressed the hope is that parties can agree on a way forward.

“If not, we will be having problems on how to implement the Paris agreement.”

The Paris agreement was signed in 2016 sets out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

It also aims to strengthen countries' ability to deal with the impacts of climate change and support them in their efforts.

The Paris Agreement strongly urges developed countries to scale up their levels of financial support with a concrete plan to reach a U$S100 billion target a year by 2020 as well as technology transfer and enhance capacities.

ELLANIE SMIT