Draft Paris climate compact now down to just 14 pages

A scrum of COP21 delegates waits by the Documents booth inside the Le Bourget convention center for a hard copy of the “clean text” of the draft Paris agreement on climate change. JN

PARIS—A “clean text” of the draft Paris agreement designed to arrest the worst effects of climate change was released at around 3 pm on Thursday (11 pm in Manila), just over 48 hours before the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was set to end.

The clean text of the draft agreement was now only 14 pages long, down from 21 in the December 5 version. The accompanying draft decision runs 15 pages, down from 23.

The shorter length bodes well for the negotiations; the number of bracketed passages has also been pruned, from over 900 to perhaps 200-plus.

But in a reminder of the difficulties remaining even in a negotiation process that has been expertly handled by the French government and marked by a sense of optimism, the release of the draft was delayed by over two hours, reportedly because the French hosts needed more time to reconcile certain provisions.

The new draft includes all the positions that the Philippine delegation to COP21 is invested in — but a first look shows that many of these positions are included as options, for further negotiation. For instance, the paragraph on human rights in the Preamble has been placed back in brackets; this means its survival as a provision in the Paris agreement is not yet assured.

In the final days of negotiations, delegates typically endure marathon sessions, forgoing sleep or eating on the fly, to reach agreement.