Nations still worlds apart

Nations at UN climate talks were haggling yesterday over the world's plan to avert disaster as host Poland dumped a draft decision text on delegates just hours before the summit was due to end.

Negotiators told AFP that delegates from nearly 200 nations were still far apart on several crunch issues -- from how the future fight against climate change is funded, to the levels of help given to countries already experiencing its effects.

Ministers at the COP24 talks must agree on a common rule book to make good on promises made by countries in the landmark 2015 Paris accord, which vowed to limit global temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

But with the starkest warnings yet from scientists highlighting the need to drastically slash fossil fuel emissions within the coming decades in order to meet the safer cap of 1.5C warming, delegates were urged to act now or condemn at-risk nations to disaster.

One negotiator told AFP there were "several areas of concern" surrounding the draft decision text released overnight by Poland.

A major sticking point remains finance. Developing nations say they cannot afford to make their economies greener without reliable, transparent funding from richer nations. Developed nations -- responsible for the lion's share of historic greenhouse gas emissions -- were accused of seeking to shirk funding promises made in Paris.

The draft text gave short shrift to another red-line issue for poor countries exposed to the ravages brought on by global warming: so-called "loss and damage". The term Loss and damage denotes impacts of climate-related stressors that occur despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climatic changes.

"It is extremely concerning that loss and damage has been relegated to a footnote in the current draft," Mark Lutes, delegation lead for WWF.

Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate negotiator, said his country -- the world's largest carbon emitter -- "will do what we can" to get a deal but warned everyone might not like it.

The expectation is that talks will go deep into overtime, with a number of key issues still unresolved.