2nd Ld Writethru-Roundup: Negotiating text for Paris climate conference reached: UNFCCC

The negotiating text for a new agreement on climate change to be concluded at the Paris climate conference in December was reached after a week-long negotiation ending Friday, announced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) here.

This year's first round of UN climate talks, which started here on February 8, included delegations from over 190 parties who arrived at a climate blueprint.

Having initially aimed at streamlining the Lima document of nearly 40 pages which was created in December 2014, the negotiators ended up with a hefty 86-page text, which will be the basis for negotiations over the next few months leading up to the Paris meeting.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, told reporters here this afternoon that no matter how many pages that the text has, they achieved the task for this session to move forward from the "informal draft that came out of Lima (climate conference)" to the "formal negotiating text."

Figueres said a formal negotiating text was now in place which contains the views and concerns of all parties and was constructed in full transparency, with parties now aware of each other's positions.

The negotiating text covers contents ranging from mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity-building.

This blueprint of options and ideas for the new global climate agreement will be translated into the UN's six official languages and then circulated to all parties in the first quarter of 2015, according to UNFCCC.

Figueres said this fulfills the internationally-accepted timetable for reaching a possible treaty, thus making it feasible for legal instrument to be adopted in Paris. However, the text as it stands does not set the possibility in stone, she said.

As noted by the UNFCCC, the next step is for negotiators to narrow down options and reach consensus on the content for the new climate deal. Formal work and negotiations on the text will continue in Bonn, Germany in June with two further formal sessions planned for later this year.

The latest climate meeting in Geneva was convened by the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) with the UN climate change body, which is the negotiating body tasked with putting together the Paris agreement.

Participants at the Lima conference agreed on two deliverables, including the draft text for the 2015 agreement, paving the way for the adoption of a universal and meaningful agreement at the end of 2015 that will come into effect in 2020. Endit