Roundup: UN climate talks conclude with pressures to speed up pace

The latest round of United Nations negotiations on climate change concluded on Friday here with progress seen by developing countries as slow, posing pressures on negotiators who will come back next month to continue thrashing out a global climate deal to be signed in Paris at the end of the year.

During the negotiations which started on Monday, delegates from nearly 200 countries and regions worked on a draft document of the Paris deal drawn by co-chairs of the talks, sharing their views on key issues including carbon emission reduction and finance support from developed countries.

"It has been incredibly productive with real engagement from parties," said Daniel Reifsnyder, one of the co-chairs.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also described the negotiations as "in the direction of process," saying that there was a common ground among all the countries that "Paris is the final destination for the new universal agreement."

Developing countries and some NGOs, however, said the pace could be faster as the final moment was approaching and parties should start textual negotiations instead of "conceptual discussions" as they did in the past week.

There is only one official meeting left for negotiators before they head for Paris to clinch the new climate deal which will set rules for actions to prevent global warming above 2 degrees Celsius after 2020.

Current draft of the deal runs over 80 pages, and is basically a compilation of massive options from different countries. Negotiators were expected to streamline the draft to a much slimmer size during this session so that it could be readable for ministers who will intervene in the negotiations in Paris at the year end.

"At this point of time, the pace indeed needs to speed up so that we could start negotiating on the text," said Su Wei, China's chief negotiator, adding that "no obvious progress" was seen in almost all key sections as officials were still clarifying their positions on "conceptual issues."

"We wish the process could be moving faster, starting paragraph-by-paragraph negotiations," he said.

Main divergences include how to share emission cutting responsibilities among different countries and finance support from developed countries to developing countries.

At the closing meeting on Friday, officials agreed to let co-chairs draw a new draft document of the Paris deal, reflecting their views and positions presented during this session. Endit