Climate talks end with 'progress' on Paris rulebook

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Global talks on curbing climate change wrapped up Friday, with delegates and observers claiming progress on several key details of the 2015 Paris accord.

The two-week negotiations focused on a range of issues including transparency, financial assistance for poor nations and how to keep raising countries' targets for cutting carbon emissions.

/UNFCCC Photo

What else happened at COP23?

No to coal: A least 15 countries and numerous regions – including two American states – have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power generation before 2030.

The Powering Past Coal alliance aims to have 50 members by the next UN climate summit in 2018 to be held in Poland's Katowice, one of Europe's most polluted cities.

City pledge: Mayors from 25 cities around the world, representing 150 million citizens, pledged to cut their carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

China and carbon futures: Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change, ruled out any immediate introduction of carbon futures as well as a carbon tax. China has already set up seven pilot regional carbon trading platforms and is set to launch a nationwide exchange.

Xie also pledged that China will work with other countries to accelerate follow-up negotiations on the Paris agreement, make arrangements for facilitative dialogues to be held in 2018, and implement pre-2020 actions and commitments.

A report this past week warned that emissions of carbon dioxide, the main planet-warming gas, were set to rise by two percent in 2017 after three years of hardly any growth.

US role: Donald Trump's decision to pull the US out of the Paris agreement cast a shadow over the Bonn climate talks, but the president's choice to make the US the only country to reject a "common cause" approach to climate change was swiped at but rarely addressed directly.

Trump has suggested he may be willing to stay in a renegotiated deal, but there has been no evidence of appetite to go back to the table from other countries. The principal contribution from the US was a proposal to promote "clean" fossil fuels and nuclear power as a solution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

With a wary eye on America, which sent negotiators to a forum it intends to quit, envoys from nearly 200 countries got on with the business of designing a "rule book" for enacting the agreement, which enters into full force in three years' time.

"The Trump administration failed to stop the global climate talks from moving forward," said Greenpeace observer Jens Mattias Clausen.

Syria to join: Syria said it was preparing to enter the Paris deal, leaving the US as the only country in the world not seeking to be a part of the "common cause" agreement.

Hunger and malnutrition: Climate change threats, from worsening drought and flooding to sea level rise, could increase the risks of hunger and child malnutrition around the world by 20 percent by 2050, the World Food Programme warned.

Funding shortfall: French President Emmanuel Macron, who will host a summit on climate finance in Paris on December 12, said his country will make up a shortfall in US funding for climate research by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Source(s): AP ,AFP ,Reuters