Cop 21: Arab League states block 1.5°C limit

OREANDA-NEWS. December 07, 2015. Arab League states, led by Saudi Arabia, have blocked a move to tighten the internationally agreed 2°C global warming limit to 1.5°C, despite majority support among countries for a tougher goal to be adopted under the global climate deal being negotiated in Paris.

The group's blocking of the 1.5°C limit means a tougher temperature target is unlikely to be adopted under the Paris agreement, which will render the deal weaker. The results of an expert review from 2013-15 found dangers in breaching a global warming limit of 1.5°C.

The proposal for a 1.5°C temperature goal, called for by more than 100 countries and led by those that are more vulnerable to climate change, gained added traction earlier in the week when France and Germany became the first industrialised nations to support the stricter limit.

But India and China were also "less adamant" in adopting a 1.5°C temperature goal and, in the end, only agreed to approving procedural conclusions, according to aid organisation Care International's climate change advocacy co-ordinator Sven Harmeling.

Meanhwhile, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) — a subsidiary UN Framework Convention on Climate Change body established in 2011 to develop the components of the new global climate deal to be agreed at the Paris summit — issued a new set of proposals that it hopes will find support among the parties negotiating the climate deal.

UN negotiators were due to reconvene today and agree a final text before the ADP group's proceedings come to a close. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who is presiding as the climate summit's president, has set a strict deadline of 12:00 local time tomorrow for having ADP's finalised proposals.

Fabius expressed hope that the text will contain many compromise solutions and few items that remain to be agreed. On 7 December, ministers will receive the finalised ADP document to use in the summit's high-level negotiations.