The negotiating text for a global climate deal has become more balanced following talks in Bonn, quelling concerns among some countries that the draft was biased, the head of the UN's climate change negotiations has said.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), admitted at a Chatham House conference on climate change that the text had moved from nine to 32 pages and was more wordy and less coherent than that drawn up by the co-chairs of the working group tasked with coordinating the draft agreement. However, she claimed this was not "terrible news", since countries had been more involved in drafting the draft than previously.
"I can't emphasise enough how important it is for governments to finally take ownership of the text," Figueres said. "We move from an incomplete text to something that is definitely comprehensive, as declared by many countries at the end of the talks, and we moved from a version that was deemed to be biased to one that is now balanced."
Some progress was also made on long-term goals for climate adaptation and on how a global reporting regime on emissions could work, said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate programme at the World Resources Institute. The draft text now also includes clauses on market mechanisms, such as carbon pricing.
However, Morgan said more work was still required on financing climate adaptation and mitigation, in particular on meeting the pledge to provide $100 billion made at the 2009 Copenhagen talks. Another sticking point was loss and damage, or how to compensate developing countries for climate change impacts that are difficult or impossible to adapt to, she said.
International environment ministers will examine the negotiating text at a two-day meeting in Paris in early November.
