nuclear-news

* Warsaw talks go into overtime due to deadlock

* Delegates still discussing “climate aid”

By Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney WARSAW, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Almost 200 nations kept a plan to reach a new U.N. climate pact in 2015 alive on Saturday when rich and poor countries reached a compromise on sharing out the efforts needed to slow global warming.

A two-week negotiation in Warsaw had been due to end on Friday, but was blocked over a timetable for the first U.N. climate accord that would set greenhouse gas emissions requirements for all nations. The pact is due to be agreed in 2015 and come into force after 2020.

Negotiators finally agreed that all countries should work to curb emissions – a process described in the jargon as “intended nationally determined contributions” – as soon as possible and ideally by the first quarter of 2015.

The agreement ended deadlock between rich and poor about sharing out the burden of limiting emissions blamed for causing more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

Under the last climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, only the most developed countries were required to limit their emissions – one of the main reasons the United States refused to accept it, saying rapidly growing economies like China and India must also take part.

“Just in the nick of time, the negotiators in Warsaw delivered enough to keep the process moving,” said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute think-tank…..http://www.trust.org/item/20131123161140-rkh7z