RPT: REVIEW - COP24 Adopts Rulebook On Paris Deal Implementation, Defers Some Unresolved Issues To 2019

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th December, 2018) The two-week talks on climate change in the Polish city of Katowice finally produced Saturday a set of guidelines to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement, albeit with a one-day delay and a number of unresolved issues put off until the next conference.

The 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) opened on December 2. The talks were initially scheduled to wrap up on December 14, but were extended through the next day, since the closing plenary meeting was � as the United Nations remarked � "postponed close to a dozen times."

The Paris Agreement Work Programme or Katowice agreement sets out how to "uniformly count" and report greenhouse gas emissions, provide information about mitigation and adaptation measures.

"Katowice has shown once more the resilience of the Paris Agreement - our solid roadmap for climate action. The approval of the Paris Agreement Work Programme is the basis for a transformative process which will require strengthened ambition from the international community. Science has clearly shown that we need enhanced ambition to defeat climate change," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Saturday.

The report also envisages flexibility for emerging economies, with developed countries expressing commitment to provide financial assistance to help them in cutting emissions and tackling consequences of climate change.

"The guidelines that delegations have been working on day and night are balanced and clearly reflect how responsibilities are distributed amongst the world's nations. They incorporate the fact that countries have different capabilities and economic and social realities at home, while providing the foundation for ever increasing ambition," UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said, as quoted in a UN statement.

Even though the United Nations described the Katowice agreement as a "solid roadmap for climate action," the agreement was the result of a compromise reached after heated exchanges during the talks and amid wider debate around climate change.

Negotiators from 196 countries for instance failed to commit themselves to the goals of the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's (IPCC) latest report, which calls for drastic action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2030 instead of the 2 degrees Celsius target agreed in Paris in 2015.

The United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait were among those who reportedly spoke against embracing the ambitious goals.

The second major stumbling block concerns the so-called market mechanisms, which are sought to be set up under the Paris Agreement and allow nations to trade their emissions allowances.

Brazil and some other emerging economies, for instance, want to be allowed to use their unused carbon credits, secured under the Kyoto Protocol's market mechanism.

The nations failed to break this deadlock, agreeing to return to the issue during COP25, which is set to take place in Chile in November 2019.

"From the beginning of the COP, it very quickly became clear that this was one area that still required much work and that the details to operationalize this part of the Paris Agreement had not yet been sufficiently explored ... Unfortunately, in the end, the differences could not be overcome," Espinosa said, noting that the majority of countries were actually ready to include the guidelines on market mechanisms.

The Paris climate deal, created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, went into force on November 4, 2016. It has been ratified by 184 of the 197 parties to the accord. The deal is aimed at keeping the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The deal's implementation will start in 2020.

The Paris deal deals has been in the international spotlight after the United States, one of the countries producing the largest amount of carbon emissions in the world, decided to start the process of withdrawal from the agreement. The Paris deal was also blamed for fuel prices spikes by "yellow vest" protesters in France.