About 100 members of NGOs and civic groups gathered in the main hall of the Spodek arena on Friday where the UN climate talks are entering their final stretch and demanded action from ministers who continued to work around the clock after a draft agreement was produced overnight.
Delegates from nearly 200 nations are trying to meet a self-imposed deadline on Friday to establish a "rule book" to flesh out details of 2015 Paris Agreement which aims to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and which comes into force in 2020.
Talks in Katowice, Poland, under way since Dec. 2, have been clouded by political divisions and progress had been slow until some deadlocks were broken and draft texts produced overnight.
As certain groups remain unhappy with parts of the text, teams are expected to continue to haggle over the texts in groups.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres who returned to inject energy into the talks on Wednesday met representatives of NGO behind closed doors on Friday shortly after members of non-governmental organisations and civic groups staged protested in the main hall.
Asked how negotiations were going he said, "We will see at the end."
Delegates said concerns remained about the rules for implementing Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and whether they can be beefed up to avoid double-counting of emissions and weakening the integrity of environmental markets.
A big issue for countries most vulnerable to climate change is a mechanism to find ways to cover the growing costs of "loss and damage", which has been relegated to a footnote in the draft.
Recognising the science behind the findings of the IPCC report is also crucial, the former president and head of the Maldives delegation Mohamed Nasheed said.
Greater clarity is also sought on what countries will do after leaving Poland and how they will strengthen their commitments and targets under the agreement.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 International, Reuters