A green hut during the Solutions COP21 exhibition in Paris yesterday. The exhibition is being held from December 4 to 11 at the Grand Palais in the French capital.

QNA
Paris


Qatar is taking part in the events accompanying the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) through activities, projects and initiatives that highlight the country’s role in combating climate change.
Abdulhadi Nasser al-Marri, the head of the Ministry of Environment’s Climate Change Department, gave a presentation on the sidelines of the conference within the Gulf pavilion on Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) report that Qatar submitted in November.
Al-Marri reviewed aspects of the report and how it reflected Qatar’s ambitions and intended contributions to back international efforts to tackle the impacts of climate change.
Meanwhile, Masoud Jarallah al-Marri, head of the ministry’s Agricultural Research Department, has given a lecture on the importance of preserving plant genetic resources and protecting them from the effects of climate change.
The lecture focused on genetic resources as the raw material on which agriculture relies and, hence, preserving them helps agricultural development, which in turn contributes to achieving food security.
The lecture touched on Qatar’s efforts in preserving genetic resources by gathering plants from land and keeping them in the Ministry of Environment’s genetic bank.
Hashim Mohamed al-Sada, of the General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa), gave a presentation at the Gulf pavilion on renewable energy, in which he discussed the Tarsheed initiative and similar projects.
Meanwhile, climate negotiators have started wrangling over money for poorer countries to adapt to global warming and limit carbon emissions, with less than 24 hours before a mid-way deadline to hand over a draft agreement today.
Worries put forward by developing countries before the UN climate summit began in Paris on Monday have become a major focus at the talks. Some 196 parties - 195 countries and the EU - are negotiating a deal to be finalised by December 11.
A text agreement, centred around national emissions plans submitted by 185 countries, has already undergone multiple changes. The key element of the agreement will likely be aimed at limiting the average global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade, with major negotiators saying that calls for a 1.5-degree goal will also be “represented” in the final text.
Scientists have said the national plans, which range widely in scope, would fall short of this goal by making temperatures increase by more than two degrees by 2100. Negotiators are trying to establish a review process to ramp up commitments on a regular basis.
“At the moment that you have an agreement that is applicable to all countries you cannot engage in the same kind of negotiated back and forth over targets,” said US lead negotiator Todd Stern.
“The targets are not legally binding but the whole accountability apparatus of this agreement is. The obligation to put forward your target and put it forward with clarifying information so that people can understand it, to re-up it in successive rounds of contributions is legally binding, in terms of what we want,” Stern said.