Negotiators from over 190 countries gathereded in Lima for the last leg of the United Nations climate negotiations that started last Dec. 1, a year before the planned finalization of a global warming deal in Paris.
The talks have been slow-moving but they recently gained momentum when top contributors of carbon emissions China, the European Union and the United States pledged to limit their countries' emissions within the next 10 to 15 years. Australia, Russia, Japan and India are also major emitters but they have not presented their pledges yet.
EU negotiator Elina Bardram said the pledges they received send out an important message to the world to come forward with their own contributions as early as possible, reiterating only 12 months remain until the global warming deal is finalized.
The climate conference to be held next year in Paris is a second chance at a landmark climate agreement that countries failed to achieve in Copenhagen five years ago.
Their goal is to reduce emission levels for greenhouse gases.
The challenge is to come up with a way that divides burden between emerging and developed economies while aiding the most vulnerable nations in protecting themselves against the threats of global warming.
Aside from getting pledges from more countries, negotiators in Lima are keen on defining what kind of information countries will be required to provide when presenting formal pledges so they may be compared.
"We should be able to lay the foundations for a strong agreement in Paris and raise the level of our ambitions so that gradually over the long term we are able to achieve climate neutrality -- this is the only way to truly achieve sustainable development for all," said Christiana Figueres, UN climate chief.
In terms of climate finance, some good news were to be heard, starting with the UN Green Climate Fund recently securing commitments at a Berlin pledging conference amounting to more than $9 billion.
Whether or not countries are to include adaptation efforts in contributions to the new climate deal is a potential hot topic that is now being discussed in Lima. Contributions were supposed to be outlined early next year but some industrialized countries have argued their offers should only cover reductions in emissions.
ActionAid International resilience and climate change manager Harjeet Singh disagrees, saying if the negotiations don't help nations deal with the real-life impacts climate change has, only prioritizing targeted emission cuts, then the delegation "will have failed the very people this agreement is meant to protect."
