No climate pact without finance commitment

No global climate rescue pact is possible without a firm commitment from rich nations on finance, French President Francois Hollande warned Monday.

"There will be no agreement... if there is no firm commitment on finance," he told journalists, and warned of a "risk of failure" for the year-end UN conference that must seal the deal in Paris.

"We need a pre-agreement on the question of finance" ahead of the November 30-December 11 meeting, said Hollande, so that heads of state attending the opening "can be certain that a deal will be closed."

Ministers and diplomats from 57 countries conclude two days of talks in the French capital Monday on the  make-or-break issue of finance for developing nations.

The huddle of foreign and environment ministers and senior officials is not part of official negotiations for the highly-anticipated agreement, but is meant to inject political momentum into the fraught UN process.

On Friday, a five-day round of official text-drafting talks closed in Bonn with negotiators expressing frustration at their own lagging progress.

They will meet in the former West German capital from October 19 to 23 to whittle away at the unwieldy blueprint.

The pact will be the first to commit all the world's nations to cutting climate-altering greenhouse gases in a bid to limit average warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Source: AFP