Plea for 'urgency' at UN climate talks

UN climate negotiators gathered in Geneva were urged yesterday to show urgency and compromise in crafting a draft by next week for a global pact to be signed in December.

"I ask you to work with efficiency and a sense of compromise," Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's environment minister and president of the negotiations told the opening session of a six-day huddle.

Pointing to scientific warnings of a dangerous Earth-warming trend, he appealed to country representatives to "work with an even higher sense of urgency".

"This is not a competition among us. We are just one team for one planet."

Negotiations resumed for the first time since an annual ministerial-level meeting in Lima last December yielded a sprawling 37-page blueprint for the agreement that countries had in 2011 agreed to finalise by the end of this year.

To be inked in the French capital, the pact must enter into force by 2020 to further the UN goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

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

The World Meteorological Organisation said 2014 was the hottest year on record -- part of a "warming trend" set to continue.

But the 195 nations gathered under the UN banner remain at odds, broadly on rich-developing country lines, and the Lima document is stuffed with options that reflect conflicting interests and demands on many fundamental points.

The goal of Geneva is to trim the document down to a workable draft for an official "negotiating text" to guide the process through to December.

Procedure requires that an official draft text must be submitted by the end of May this year -- six months before the next Conference of Parties in Paris that will adopt the final version.