UN agrees text for key Paris climate summit

UN climate talks in Geneva ended on Friday with an agreement on a formal draft negotiating text for the crucial COP21 summit in Paris in December.

The 86 page document builds on the 2014 negotiations in Lima, Peru and covers issues ranging from climate change mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity-building.

The target of the week long meeting in Switzerland was to create a draft for consideration at the Paris summit with the aim of having a new global binding climate deal signed in December.

The six-day conference was the first formal climate meeting since the Lima summit in December.

Christiana Figueres (pictured), Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said: "I am extremely encouraged by the constructive spirit and the speed at which negotiators have worked during the past week. We now have a formal negotiating text, which contains the views and concerns of all countries. The Lima Draft has now been transformed into the negotiating text and enjoys the full ownership of all countries."

Three special sessions have been added to this year's schedule of climate dates including talks about "intended nationally determined contributions", the commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are seen as central to achieving low-carbon development.

Governments from the UN member states are due to submit national plans by a deadline that runs from March to June.

The UN is hoping to limit the increase of the average global surface temperature to no more than 2°C (3.6°F) compared with pre-industrial levels with the aim of avoiding dangerous levels of climate change.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released findings in February that confirmed that fourteen out of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000 and 2014 was the warmest year on record.

The UNFCCC is based in Bonn, Germany, has 196 parties and was a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol targeted at reducing GHG emissions.

The next step is for negotiators to reach consensus on the content of the new climate deal and formal negotiations on the text will continue in Bonn, Germany in June.

Developing nations have called for their concerns to be addressed in any new deal, after a 2009 attempt to create a Copenhagen climate agreement fell short.

Ahmed Sareer, Maldives delegate to the U.N., said: “After years of false starts and broken promises, restoring ownership and trust in the process is no small achievement. And I think we have come a long way toward doing that."

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