A staff waters plants during the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Spain, Dec. 12, 2019.(Xinhua/Lu Yang)
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) came to an end on Sunday after an unprecedentedly long extension, as negotiators failed to reach an agreement on Article 6 of 2015 Paris Agreement about the details of carbon market mechanisms.
The negotiations were scheduled to end on Friday but continued throughout Saturday and into Sunday morning. It was the longest COP in history, which was quite usual to be extended due to intense discussions.
"We had so many talks till so late, without sleeping all night," said Carolina Schmidt, chairwoman of the COP25 and the environment minister of Chile, at the closing plenary of the conference.
Over the past two weeks, delegates from almost 200 countries focused on Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is about some technical details of the implementation of the deal in building the market mechanism, especially the global carbon market.
"We want to close article 6 ... which will generate resources to bring about projects, and the projects would allow us to move toward sustainable development ... The Mechanisms contribute to helping us move forward," said Schmidt.
"Clearly it is said to reach the agreement, but we were so very close. I thank you for your efforts, the long hours and achieving agreement we were on the edge. We have concrete progress on concrete texts to allow us to look ahead with hope," according to Schmidt.
At the closing plenary, delegates from most countries express their regret of failing to achieve the agreement on Article 6. The work will be left for further discussion at the next congress COP26, which will be held in Glasgow next year.
Participating countries also had differences in the ambitions of addressing climate change, as some countries want to have more ambitious goals, but others want to stick to the goals stipulated in the Paris Agreement
