Governments around the world approved a major new United Nations (UN) report on climate change on Sunday, though the process has been slowed by a dispute between rich and developing countries on emissions targets and financial assistance to vulnerable nations.
The report, written by hundreds of the world’s best scientists, was due to be approved by government delegations on Friday at the end of a meeting in Interlaken, Switzerland.
However, the end of the meeting was postponed several times, since the delegates of certain major nations, such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the European Union, negotiated throughout the end of the week on the formulation of the key phrases of the text.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report summarizes extensive research on global warming compiled since the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.
A summary of the report was approved early Sunday, but it took several hours for the full document to receive the stamp of approval.
The UN plans to release the report at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
The unusual process of having a scientific report approved by member countries is intended to ensure that governments accept its findings and then guide their own decisions.
At the start of the meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on delegates to provide “hard, hard facts” to make it clear that there is little time left for the world to limit global warming to 1 .5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
While average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1°C since the 19e century, Mr. Guterres insisted that the 1.5°C target limit remains possible “with rapid and deep reductions in emissions in all sectors of the global economy”.
One of the thorniest issues of this week’s meeting was how to define which nations are considered vulnerable developing countries, making them eligible to receive sums from a “loss and damage” fund agreed at the last UN climate talks in Egypt.
Delegates also struggled to agree on numbers that will determine how much greenhouse gas emissions will need to be cut over the next few years to meet the 1.5°C target.
As the country that has released the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since industrialization, the United States has pushed hard against the notion of historical responsibility for climate change.