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Paris : Delegates participating in the COP21 Climate summit put in the best of their efforts and reached to the penultimate round of shaping up of the agreement in Paris, a work which lasted most part of the night and brought forth a near-final version of the agreement at Le Bourget climate centre. Negotiators at the Paris climate summit have been working meticulously in the post sunset hours trying to reach a global agreement, with talks in their final day. It is hoped that the deal would be inked anytime today. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the summit, told negotiators about the optimism with which the deal was getting inked, and assured them with promising words like – I think we will make it.

A new global agreement that would stake out a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change, would take the shape of a final inked deal which will be signed here in Paris and would come into being in 2020. The good news is that a draft document finalized on Wednesday, running to just 29 pages in total, was considerably smaller than previous versions. And the better news is — the latest version, delivered after consultations throughout Thursday, was 27 pages. Fabius, who led the delegates in discussion through the night, told the negotiators – we are into the final lap which separates us from a universal, legally binding, ambitious, fair and lasting agreement which the world is waiting for.

The draft has salient attributes. Some of them are — it has cut the options on the long-term goal of the proposed treaty. It states that temperature rises must be kept well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C. Detailing part of it reveals that the number of square brackets, indicating significant disagreement, had been reduced to around 50, a major improvement on early format when they ran to more than 900.

However, some campaigners were not happy with Thursday’s draft, saying it denied ‘climate justice’. They expressed opinions in the likes of — rich countries have a responsibility to ensure a fair global deal for everyone, not just themselves, and as we move into these final hours of negotiations poorer countries must not settle for anything less. Other agreeing voice showed optimism in the likes of — the draft has affirmed the need to set quantified funding goals for both climate change mitigation and adaptation for the years after 2020. Some added — this is a very encouraging development and we strongly urge negotiators to keep this in the final agreement.

India has put up its bet on solar energy and is committed to contributing positively towards climate restructure and saving the planet from depleting resources, in the best way it can.