World leaders vote on global climate change plan

That was a key demand of poor countries ravaged by the effects of climate change and rising sea levels.

“You are going to be deciding a historic agreement”, he said.

The document is being translated into the eight official United Nations languages.

He spoke as a new, potentially final draft of the accord was prepared, which would require all countries to take steps to reduce emissions and help each other cope with climate change.

While some climate change activists and US Republicans will likely find fault with the accord – either for failing to take sufficiently drastic action, or for overreacting to an uncertain threat – numerous estimated 40,000 officials and environmentalists who set up camp on the outskirts of Paris say they see it as a long overdue turning point.

“The agreement will not be ideal for every body if everyone reads it only in their own interests, but it will be a success for us all”, the French head of state said, stressing the draft text, once adopted, “will be the first universal agreement in history of climate negotiations”. Actual dollar amounts were kept out of the agreement itself, but wealthy nations had previously pledged to provide $100 billion in climate finance by 2020.

The proposed agreement was not available immediately after Fabius’s speech, but the French foreign minister indicated that it would be legally binding.

The final draft is believed to have retained a long-term goal of keeping the overall global temperature rise from pre-industrial times to the end of this century “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Envoys from more than 195 nations are poised to adopt the most sweeping deal on global warming ever, extending limits on fossil-fuel pollution to developing nations for the first time.

The landmark deal, the culmination of years of negations, is an attempt to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The G77 bloc of 134 developing nations, including China, gave the nod for the hard-fought UN climate rescue pact due to be presented for adoption in Paris. “You have it”, French President Francois Hollande told the conference, referring to the 31-page draft final text of the pact, while also requesting the negotiators to adopt it.

However, an ActionAid spokesperson said: ‘What we have been presented with doesn’t go far enough to improve the fragile existence of millions around the world’.

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said that the agreement would not create much positive development.

-LOSS AND DAMAGE: In a victory for small island nations threatened by rising seas, the agreement includes a section recognizing “loss and damage” associated with climate-related disasters.