COP21: Climate deal ‘to keep rises well below 2 degrees’

Amid thunderous applause and an atmosphere charged with emotion, French president Francois Hollande and his foreign minister Laurent Fabius - the conference president - have called on delegates at the COP21 climate summit to adopt a historic agreement to tackle climate change.

“You are the world,” Mr Hollande told ministers and negotiators representing 195 countries at the summit in Le Bourget, just north of Paris. “We are at a decisive moment in time,” he said. “There is only one relevant question: Do we want an agreement.”

The final draft of the deal had just been circulated after long hours of negotiations, and it’s been presented to the conference by France on a “take it or leave it basis”. Delegates are now studying the document over lunch before resuming the plenary session at 2.45pm (Irish time).

Mr Hollande described the draft as “ambitious, but realistic”, saying it “reconciles responsibilities, especially of richer countries [for climate change] and also gives the most vulnerable countries the means they have been promised [to adapt to the impacts of global warming].”

If it is adopted by COP21, which is now widely expected later today, it “will be the first universal agreement in the history of climate negotiations,” he said, adding that “this will be a major leap for mankind” because it would “ensure there will be a fight on [tackling] global warming.”

Reminding the packed plenary session that it was “almost exactly a month since Paris was attacked” on November 13th, the French president said “the 12th of December will go down as a major date in the history of mankind” if the agreement is adopted by COP21 later today.

“We are in the home stretch. There will be no putting it off. A decisive agreement is here and now,” Mr Hollande declared, saying that delegates were “attached to this beautiful idea that the international community can act [AND]what brings us together is the planet itself.”

He paid a warm tribute to Mr Fabius, who is widely credited with having steered the tough negotiations over the past two weeks in a transparent manner that helped to build trust among the parties and ultimately produced a draft of an agreement in Paris that they could all endorse.

The French foreign minister, who held his hand on his heart and looked quite emotional as he stood up to acknowledge a standing ovation, said he wanted the deal to be “as good as possible”, describing it as “ambitious, fair, balanced, dynamic and legally binding” - at least in part.

Mr Fabius noted that the final draft acknowledged the notion of climate justice and differentiation between developed and developing countries, with the objective to have mean temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius “and to limit that to 1.5 degrees” - a line that won widespread applause.

“The time has come to focus not on red lines, but on green lines for universal commitment,” he declared. “Quite clearly, this text - our text - is the best possible balance. It is powerful, yet delicate, and you can go back home with heads held high, having achieved something important.”

Describing it as a “historic turning point” after 20 years of UN climate negotiations, he said: “Our responsibility to history is immense. Nobody here wants a repetition of what happened in Copenhagen [in 2009]. The very credibility of multilateralism is what is at stake.”

But unlike the Copenhagen disaster, he felt that “today, the planets are aligned” for an agreement to be reached.

Ending his speech by quoting the words of Nelson Mandela that “it always seems impossible until it’s done”, he said: “The world is holding its breath. It’s counting on all of us.”

Calling on delegates not to let a quest for perfection to become “an enemy of the public good”, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said they had to “act as science dictates and protect the planet that sustains us”, adding that the deal “promises to set the world on a new path to a climate-resilient future”.