UN Climate Change Talks End With a Deal

The UN climate change talks ended late on Saturday night in Poland with a deal agreed on how to put the 2015 Paris agreement into action, but with other contentious problems left to be resolved next year. Nations finally agree on implementing 2015 Paris agreement with trickiest issues on back burner. Where Brazil wanted an amendment that would benefit the country for its large rain forest cover, but this was opposed by others as it could allow the double-counting of carbon credits, undermining the integrity of the system.
António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, praised countries for coming to an agreement, but demanded more. “The approval of the Paris agreement work programme is the basis for a trans-formative process which will require strengthened ambition from the international community,” he said.
This year has seen extreme weather across many parts of the globe, and the fourth highest global average temperatures on record, while the IPCC warning is the starkest yet to come from scientists. In the final hours, agreement was held up by a debate over the market in carbon credits, awarded to countries for their emissions-cutting efforts and for their carbon sinks, such as forests, which absorb carbon dioxide.The key question of whether countries are doing enough to cut their emissions, in the light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that predicted dire consequences if temperatures were allowed to rise more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, was left out.
> Alma Siddiqua