http://news.sky.com/story/1577244/un-climate-chief-optimistic-on-paris-summit

 

The UN's climate chief has told Sky News she is confident a new international agreement will be reached at next month's global summit on the issue.

 

When asked about the reason for her optimism, Christiana Figueres said: "I see capital being shifted, I see more and more technologies becoming accessible and commercial.

"As we speak, I see more and more political will because every country is realising they're all impacted - there's not a single country that has not felt the negative impact of climate change.

"And what they can do now and in the near future is actually in their interest anyway.

"The challenge is: how do you move from something that is being nationally determined because it's within your own interest and how do you bring that together with global responsibility?

"That's the challenge ahead of Paris."

The summit in Paris will see 196 countries meet between 30 November and 11 December aiming to reach a legally-binding and universal agreement on measures to deal with climate change.

Reaching consensus between rich and poor countries; developed and developing countries will not be easy, however.

Despite her optimism about the summit, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change says any deal will fall short of the aim of keeping global warming below two degrees by the end of this century.

She maintained that the two-degree point was still "the aim in the long run" but was "not the aim of Paris itself".

"The aim of Paris is to understand where we are, take the first effort and then construct the pathway that is going to be able to build on previous efforts ... until we get to that two-degree path," she said.

Ms Figueres would not be drawn on the UK government rolling back green policy such as subsidies for renewable energy.

But she praised Britain for its "incredible international leadership" in the offshore wind industry, which she described as "completely over-achieving every single expectation, which was originally 27% of efficiency now going to 40%, way beyond every country".