French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday that the final Paris Climate Agreement will be ready on Saturday at 9 a.m. His announcement pointed to an impending resolution of disputes on three major issues and adoption of the agreement by all parties on Saturday.
Despite 48 hours of crunch time talks that have gone on late into the night on two days amid pressure from civil society for an ambitious temperature goal of 1.5 degrees C, Mr. Fabius and the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that the stalemate over the differentiation question between rich and poor countries on their obligations, provision of finance for developing and vulnerable countries, and the underpinning ambition for temperature rise had to be resolved.
Minister Fabius, who holds the presidency of the Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris had a discussion with Mr. Ban Ki-moon and the two made a joint media appearance around noon here.
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The UN Secretary General said, "This is not a moment to talk about national perspectives. Good global solutions will help good local solutions. This [agreement] will help the low carbon economy. The low carbon economy will help implement Sustainable Development Goals which were adopted by world leaders with strong excitement last September. I am again urging and appealing to all leaders and all state parties to take a final decision for humanity."
By any standard the Paris negotiation was the most complicated he had seen, Mr. Ban Ki-moon said, but it was also the most important for humanity. "We have very limited hours remaining. I sincerely hope that the negotiators and Ministers will take the leadership in negotiation and engagement and their wise decision, there are still several outstanding issues, like differentiation, ambitions and climate financing," he added.