Climate delegates concluded their work in Geneva last week, producing an 86-page draft negotiating text that includes language on a fossil fuel phase-out, the health benefits of climate action, a just work force transition, and safeguards for human rights and intergenerational justice.
“Civil society groups also used Geneva to push governments into short-term action, using this decade to seriously ramp up their efforts towards the long-term goal of phasing out fossil fuel emissions,” The Daily Tck reports.
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“The 2015 climate negotiations are off to a promising start after a productive week in Geneva,” said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the World Resources Institute climate program. “At this early stage, the palpable positive spirit coming out of Geneva is a much better measure of progress than the current length of the negotiating text.”
She added that delegates showed heightened interest in five-year cycles of emission reductions, climate adaptation efforts, and climate finance that “inform each other and are critical for an ambitious, long-lasting agreement.”
Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that “there remain deep and long-standing divisions on key issues—among them, which countries are more obligated than others to take action to reduce emissions, how and by how much to ramp up climate finance, and how to give greater priority to action on adaptation and loss and damage.”
