A. DRAFT AGREEMENT

[ The Parties to this Agreement,

Pp1 Being Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hereinafter referred to as ôthe Conventionö,

Pp2 In furtherance of the objective of the Convention,

There are two opposing visions of the new climate regime and the unresolved issue is whether the multilateral consensus at Paris will be around climate justice, reflecting the concerns of the majority of the human population, or environmental integrity, which reflects the approach adopted in the negotiation text, released on 5 October 2015.

The Pope has said he hopes the document, entitled LautadoSii (Praised be),’On Care for Our Common Home’, will influence the UN conference on climate change in Paris this year. Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon praised the moral leadership being demonstrated by Pope Francis, also hoping that this leadership will prove influential, if not decisive, in the upcoming Paris climate talks in November this year.

Small changes in urban human behavior and increased energy efficiency will have a positive impact on our natural resources.

Mukul Sanwal[1]

The US submission on elements of the post-2015 agreement is a good basis for further deliberation by countries, as it is exhaustive with only some elements needing to be debated for a global consensus.

For growing economies the stress has to be on patterns of natural resource use and not on the status of natural resources; that is, dealing with the causes rather than the symptoms of the problem of climate change. The time has come for rapidly growing Asia to distinguish between the global, regional and national aspects of climate policy, recognize the linkages and shape the deliberations for the new climate regime by taking substantive measures at home.

Extreme caution needs to be taken while mulling of linking different carbon markets

With the carbon market in doldrums, emerging economies like India will have to announce bolder schemes for a low carbon future

As the Durban COP enters the homestretch it is worth stepping back a few years – to COP-13 at Bali in 2007. For it is the Bali COP that led to the creation of the Ad-hoc working groups for Long-term Cooperative Action (AWGLCA) and for the Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP), which have been the main arenas for negotiation since then.