Negotiations on Paris climate agreement starts before world leaders arrive

PARIS -- Negotiators at a working group discussing the final draft text of a global climate agreement started their work on Sunday afternoon, a day before world leaders arrive to inject political impetus, in a bid to make fully use of the limited remaining negotiating time.

The agreement was set to be thrashed out by officials from nearly 200 countries in a United Nations climate conference (COP21) which officially opens on Monday, when about 150 state heads and government leaders will deliver speeches at Le Bourget conference center on the northern outskirts of Paris.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged negotiators to focus their energy on finding solutions and to make advances in order to reach the deal by December 11 when the conference was scheduled to end.

"Every day, we have to make progress," said Fabius, "If we want to wait for the 11th hour and hope for a miracle, I think we do not have the right attitude."

Negotiators have one week to further slim a draft text, now runs over 50 pages, to a more manageable size for ministers to read.

They were expected to provide the final draft on the morning of December 5. The draft will then be reviewed by all countries in the afternoon, and left for ministers to make decisions in the second week.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei said as time was pressing, negotiators will "make every minute and second count" to bridge divergences and reach a legally binding climate agreement by December 11.

Over 1,000 brackets were involved in the latest version of draft text which negotiators clinched in October in Bonn Germany, representing a huge amount of conflicts that countries have over what should be written in the final agreement.

Major hurdles include the allocation of emission-cutting responsibilities among countries, developed countries' finance and technology support to developing countries after 2020, as well as targets revision and review mechanisms.

G77 and China, a group representing 134 developing countries, emphasized in a statement on Sunday that the objective of the ongoing negotiations was to enhance action and to promote the full, effective and sustained implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty which obliges developed countries to take the lead in reducing carbon emissions and provide finance and technology support to developing countries.

The Convention's principles and provisions, "in particular the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities", must be reflected in the elements of the Paris agreement.

"We urge developed countries to provide enhanced finance, technology development and transfer and capacity-building support to developing countries for ambitious mitigation and adaptation actions," the group said.