The end of the year 2014 saw 194 countries gathering for a two-week long UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru in order to reach negotiations for the upcoming Paris talks next year. The key goal of this conference was to reach an agreement on a transparent system of measuring emissions, which is taken to be the biggest challenge in combating global warming.
The conference was heated with differences in rich and poor countries over the way to curb emissions, which dragged the initially 14 day long talk extend to include two more days. The delegates, though not very optimistic over the outcome of the negotiations, expressed hope that the conference will somewhat ease talks in the upcoming summit in France in late 2015. The conference entailed countries to submit individual national pledges in the latter summit.
The conference entailed all countries, whether developing or developed, to curb emissions – which is a new move compared to the previously held principle to only hold developed countries responsible for climate change. How they will do this, it was decided, is to be proposed as a draft within March this year, while many decisions of greater importance were postponed to be taken at the Paris summit. However, wealthy countries are expected to provide climate aid to developing or already affected countries as before. Another notable, though questionable, development was that both US and China pledged to cut emissions. The US president promised that they will do this to around 28% within 2025, while China gave up to domestic unrest by assuring that after reaching its peak in 2030, their emission rates will start going down after.
No participating country was fully satisfied at the talks, while the poorer countries were found accusing the richer ones trying to escape responsibilities in tackling global warming. Environmental activists and groups, too, expressed extreme dissatisfaction over what the conference actually achieved. They deemed the results to be too weak both to limit warming to the agreed level and to save poorer countries from the brunt of climate change.