Katowice (Poland): Nearly 200 nations have agreed to enforce rules on implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP24, dragged on into the final hours of Saturday, one full day beyond the original deadline, suffering some holdback due to certain objections of Brazil and Turkey.
The talks finally ended with the 133-page Paris rulebook being unanimously adopted in the Polish city of Katowice. The Paris deal will come into force in 2020.
The guidelines, known as Paris rulebook, will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change.
COP24 President Michal Kurtyka of Poland said: “All nations have worked tirelessly. All nations showed their commitment. All nations can leave Katowice with a sense of pride, knowing that their efforts have paid off.” “The guidelines contained in the Katowice Climate Package provide the basis for implementing the agreement as of 2020,” Kurtyka, who opened the conference’s closing plenary meeting, which had been postponed close to a dozen times. The implementation of the agreement will benefit people from all walks of life, especially the most vulnerable, said the UN Climate Change secretariat.
The agreed “Katowice Climate Package” is designed to operationalise the climate change regime contained in the Paris Agreement. It will promote international cooperation and encourage greater ambition, it said. The Paris guidelines will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change.
The Katowice package includes guidelines that will operationalise the transparency framework.
It sets out how countries will provide information about their Nationally Determined Contributions that describe their domestic climate actions. (IANS)