Climate pact blueprint ready for adoption

Negotiators in Geneva are geared to adopt a climate blueprint Friday, a symbolic milestone in the fraught UN process that must culminate in a universal pact in Paris in December.

Assembled over the past six days, the 86-page draft plan for limiting manmade global warming is due to be adopted at a closing session that starts at 1400 GMT.

Ever since the 2009 Copenhagen conference failed to deliver a world agreement, the 195 nations gathered under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change have been working on a new project for adoption by the end of this year.

Set to be inked at the November 30-December 11 UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris, the pact must enter into force by 2020 to further the UN goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

Scientists warn that at current greenhouse gas emission trends, Earth is on track for double that, or more -- a recipe for catastrophic droughts, storms, floods and rising seas.