Conference of Parties on Climate negotiations: Paris Alliance for Climate

We are half way through a year, 2015, during which the focus is on development and climate. These battles can be won only if we fight together: to tackle poverty and enable development, we must win the battle against climate change.
To do so, we need to build together an agreement in Paris that enables us to limit the rise of the average temperature of the planet less than 2oC, or 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels, and adapt our societies to deal with the existing climate disruption.
It should set us on the path of a low-carbon transition which will allow everyone to benefit from sustainable development. This transition will - above all - be an opportunity to improve energy security, bring down the deficit, reduce poverty, and improve public health...  
In our capacity as future presidency for COP21, the international framework for climate negotiations, we are working with all countries, transparently, to support the negotiating process towards an agreement everyone will be able to own. The many discussions we are having confirm that all countries want to achieve a universal agreement on the climate in December 2015.
As incoming presidency of the COP21, we are not supporting one specific solution, neither French nor European one. We are listening equally to all parties, in order to understand the concerns, the national situations and the expectations for each and every one of them, particularly the most vulnerable.
We envision that we should achieve, in December, a Paris Alliance for Climate, which should rely on four components:
n    The first, and most important one, is a universal and legally binding agreement. This agreement will have to deal equally with mitigation and adaptation, a priority for all countries which are already feeling the impact of climate disruption, sometimes in a tragic way. The agreement will also have to take into account everyone's responsibilities and capabilities. It will have to be on a long-term and establish a process of cooperation between us, so that we can reinforce our collective effort and progressively achieve a shared long-term goal.
 n    National contributions (INDCs) that each country must publish before the Paris Conference. These contributions must present commitments on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and for those willing to do so, include adaptation plans. Nearly 40 countries have already presented them. The European Union is playing its part. We have - together with Germany, the United Kingdom, and many others - supported last year the adoption of ambitious European climate and energy objectives for 2030, among which the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% compared to 1990. This constitutes the European 'INDC' to the Paris Agreement.
n    To enable a global transition, we must also address financing. We must create confidence that the commitment made in Copenhagen in 2009 to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries (some of which will go through the Green Climate Fund) will indeed be honoured. More broadly, we must establish the rules and incentives to enable a profound redirection of public and private capital flows towards the low-carbon economy.
n    Finally, the fourth aspect of the Paris Alliance is the Lima-Paris Action Agenda, which aims to involve civil society and non-governmental actors (local authorities, businesses and voluntary organizations)to commit and strengthen the engagement of States, so as to reinforce our collective effort, particularly before 2020. Today is an opportunity to showcase many concrete actions and illustrate the cooperation between Governments and non-governmental actors. It shall also convey the message, right through to the Paris Conference, that the climate challenge represents economic and social opportunities, and that all civil society actors should get on board.
In all these areas, progress is being made: contributions are being published, financial actors are getting increasingly active, and each day we get closer to the agreement that we need in Paris.
As such, the session of intermediate negotiations that just took place in Bonn reinforced the trust of parties in the process and gave a mandate to the two co-chairs of the working group to restructure the current project and present a more concise and clearer text, which will then be negotiated in the next two intermediate negotiation sessions (August and October), so that in Paris, an agreement could be reached.
We are entering a period where we need to do everything possible to identify and consolidate the areas of convergence on the key political questions. To help finding these compromises, we will support the process of formal negotiation by organising over the coming months (September and October) several informal discussions, on both negotiator and ministerial level. These meetings will gather countries which are representative of the negotiation groups, but will always be open to everyone who wants to participate, and the results will then be reported back to the ADP working group.    
We also envisage consulting heads of States and Governments, so that they can give a clear political direction. With this in mind, we are considering a meeting, led by the French President and the United Nations Secretary-General in New York, during the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, in September. Furthermore, we are also considering that heads of States and Governments, who wish to attend the opening of COP21, may do so.
As reminded by President Hollande at the G7 summit in June- where developed countries adopted an ambitious position in view of COP21 -, France is facing up to the responsibility of its future presidency with a determination to succeed and a commitment at the State's highest level.
With just four months to go until the Conference, we believe that we are on the right track, but time is short and the pace of the negotiations must be stepped up. Every meeting must represent a step forward, and everyone must agree to make the necessary choices in a spirit of mutual trust, so that in October all the issues will already have been discussed and solutions can be proposed. The Paris agreement must be built before the Paris summit.