Optimism remains for a strong climate agreement

With less than a day remaining for governments to make a deal at COP21 in Paris, David Miller, WWF-Canada President and CEO, made the following statement: 
 
“Some of the optimism of the early days of the Paris climate change talks can still be found in the latest draft of the negotiating text, but the door is still open for more ambitious commitments.
 
The new draft text recognizes the need to keep average global temperatures well below 2 °C, and references a lower limit of 1.5C, putting this crucial aspirational goal in focus. Limiting warming to no more than 1.5C offers the best chance for the Arctic and nature and communities across Canada to avoid the extremely disruptive impacts of higher levels of global warming.
 
But countries around the world still need to clearly demonstrate how they will achieve this goal.
 
More efforts are also needed to reach an agreement to review country pledges before 2020. The current 2019 timeframe that appears in this draft leaves very little time for countries to make those pledges stronger.
 
While today’s draft text offers hope, it is not final, and there is still a lot of hard work to be done around issues such as financial support for developing countries. The clock is ticking.”

For further information contact



Paris

Chris Chaplin, WWF-Canada, [email protected], +1 416 669 9155



Toronto

Rebecca Spring, WWF-Canada, [email protected], +1 647-338-6274