Climate deal delayed by possible typo

A final vote in Paris on a worldwide deal to fight climate change was delayed Saturday by what may have been a typo in the pact’s text.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations had planned to vote at 5:30 Paris time on the deal and had gathered in the main hall of the conference to do so. But the vote was then delayed, with some delegates leaving the room to meet.

{mosads}Al-Jazeera English reported that delegates were negotiating over a single word in the text. Specifically, article 4, section 4 of the final draft accord says that “Developed country parties shall continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets.”

Representatives of the United States reportedly objected to that provision and said “shall” ought to be changed to “should.”

Emma Ruby-Sachs, a consultant with the climate campaign group Avaaz, told Al-Jazeera that United States representatives feared that “shall” would require the United States to take more dramatic measures in the future on climate change than countries that could be considered “developing,” like China.

“I think it’s really about domestic politics,” Ruby-Sachs said.

“It’s that, back home, when you’re talking to Congress about this climate deal, what you want to say is China and the U.S. are being held to the same standards,” she said. “And because developed and developing aren’t defined in the text, somebody could argue that China’s a developing country, and the U.S. is a developed country, and this little word ‘shall’ actually makes the U.S. have different obligations than China.”

Richard Kinley, deputy executive secretary of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, acknowledged the error, among others, and apologized for them.

“As a result of the finalization of documents in haste by colleagues who had not slept for days, a number of errors regrettably were not detected in the document as it was being finalizied in the early hours of this morning,” he told the delegates.