UN climate talks in Geneva result in agreement on a formal draft text for a climate summit in Paris later this year. Almost 200 countries gathered in Geneva for the first official meeting since the Lima climate summit in December 2014, and adopted an 86-page draft text with the aim to expedite the achievement of the global climate agreement which should be approved in Paris in December 2015. Instead of being shortened, the document has been more than doubled in size as compared with the Lima Draft, but Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), showed herself encouraged by the work done at Geneva, and highlighted that now countries are fully aware of each other’s positions, as the new text contains the concerns and requests of all of them. On the other hand, delegates acknowledge that more conflicts are likely to arise when negotiators will have to make a real progress and to decide what the better option is in order to limit a damaging rise in temperatures. The key political test is the period from March to June, when governments are expected to submit national plans to reduce emissions. The next meeting will be held in Bonn in June. The gLAWcal Team EPSEI project Tuesday, 15 February 2015 (Source: BBC Environment)

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