French Foreign Minister says never been better momentum to get climate deal

Efforts to craft a global accord to combat climate change stumbled early on Friday after a “hard night” of talks, forcing host nation France to extend the United Nations summit by a day to overcome stubborn divisions.

In a bid to encourage agreement, French President Francois Hollande will join the special meeting Saturday and give a speech alongside U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to show “the importance of deciding and now adopting the draft text”, Hollande’s office said. Discussions again resumed on Friday later in the day.

“When there are 196 parties on such a complex subject, if everyone demands 100 percent, each and everyone will obtain zero per cent”, he said.

France said the talks would be extended, with hopes of wrapping them up on Saturday, after ministers failed to bridge deep divides during marathon negotiations.

After years of buildup and weeks of negotiations, diplomats issued a final draft of a climate change agreement Saturday that the French foreign minister described as “fair… and legally binding”.

The biggest disagreements have been over how much financial responsibility poorer nations should take in the cost of emissions-cutting measures, and what the stated long-term goal should be for the agreement.

At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years of fraught UN talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperilled island states against rising economic powerhouses, Mr Fabius urged officials from almost 200 nations to support what he hopes will be a final deal.

One of the sticking points has been coming up with a way to punish nations that don’t do their part.

Negotiators from more than 190 countries are trying to do something that’s never been done: reach a deal for all countries to reduce man-made carbon emissions and cooperate to adapt to rising seas and increasingly extreme weather caused by human activity.

“The Paris deal is not just about reducing emissions, but also about protecting vulnerable places and people”, he said.

Ahead of the talks, most nations submitted voluntary plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions from 2020, a process widely hailed as an important platform for success.

“However, if it acts as an aspiration to ensure that we do meet 2C, then that will be good”, he added.

Others said a compromise arrangement was still the most likely outcome.

“A low-carbon economy will help implementation of Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by the world leaders with a strong enthusiasm last September”, Ban stressed. “They can not take home an agreement that seems to be placing additional obligations on them under this agreement because that will require Senate approval”. It fears that could jeopardise oil production.

No details of the proposed agreement have been released so far. Nor did they expect objections from other nations, such as Venezuela, that have been obstacles in the past.

However, following that a 27-page draft was released on Thursday night wherein some progress were made but the world was still not ready to accept it was a final deal.

“Getting them to agree on the future of the planet and a deal on climate change is probably one of the toughest pieces of negotiation they’ll ever get involved in”, Barratt said. Though some significant differences remained, the latest draft reflected the vast consensus that has emerged over recent days: that the world can’t screw this up.

Fabius said Friday he was “sure” the project would succeed.