UN chief hails deal on climate change in Lima

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on Sunday hailed the outcome of the climate conference in Lima, Peru, praising delegates for setting the groundwork for a more conclusive agreement to be reached in 2015.

"The decisions adopted in Lima, including the Lima Call for Climate Action, pave the way for the adoption of a universal and meaningful agreement in 2015," said a statement issued here by Ban 's spokesperson.

The UN chief urged all parties, at their first meeting in February next year, to enter into substantive negotiations on the draft text of the 2015 agreement coming from the Conference.

He applauded delegates for having made "important advances" in clarifying their needs for preparing and presenting their so- called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the new agreement and in "finalizing the institutional architecture for a mechanism on loss and damage."

INDCs are the commitments countries are expected to make in order to keep average global temperature rise below 2?C the internationally-agreed limit aimed at staving off irreversible climate change.

In the statement, the Secretary-General called on all parties, especially the world's major economies, to submit their "ambitious national commitments well in advance of Paris."

"He also looks forward to working with the governments of Peru and France on the new Lima-Paris Action Agenda catalyze action on climate change to further increase ambition before 2020 and to support the 2015 agreement," said the statement.

The annual UN climate talks wrapped up in Lima on Sunday, reaching acceptable but not satisfying result and leaving unresolved issues to climate conference in Paris, in December next year.

In the past two weeks, negotiators from over 190 countries and organizations gathered in the city hosting the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP20) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to negotiate a new agreement addressing climate change, which was planned to be passed at the end of 2015 in Paris and come into force in 2020.