Image copyright AFP Image caption Chairman Michal Kurtyka was in high spirits as the conference reached agreement

Negotiators in Poland have finally secured agreement on a range of measures that will make the Paris climate pact operational in 2020.

Last-minute rows over carbon markets threatened to derail the two-week summit - and delayed it by a day.

Delegates believe the new rules will ensure that countries keep their promises to cut carbon.

The Katowice agreement aims to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below 2C.

"Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility," said the chairman of the talks, known as COP24, Michal Kurtyka.

"It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no-one behind."

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What did the delegates focus on?

The summit accord, reached by 196 states, outlines plans for a common rulebook for all countries - regulations that will govern the nuts and bolts of how countries cut carbon, provide finance to poorer nations and ensure that everyone is doing what they say they are doing.

Sorting out the rulebook sounds easy but is very technical. Countries often have different definitions and timetables for their carbon cutting actions.

Poorer countries want some "flexibility" in the rules so that they are not overwhelmed with regulations that they don't have the capacity to put into practice.

How years compare with the 20th Century average 2019 is on course to be in the top three warmest years 10 warmest years 10 coldest years 20th Century average Hotter Colder Months J F M A M J J A S O N D Source: NOAA Replay

The idea of being legally liable for causing climate change has long been rejected by richer nations, who fear huge bills well into the future.

A deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the rules for the monitoring of carbon credits threatened to derail the talks.

Brazil had been pushing for a weaker set of rules on carbon markets, despite strong opposition from many other countries. These discussions have now been deferred until next year.

Further tensions emerged last weekend, scientists and delegates were shocked when the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to the meeting "welcoming" a recent UN report on keeping global temperature rise to within the 1.5C limit.

The report said the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century.

In a compromise, the final statement from the summit welcomed the "completion" of the report and invited countries to make use of it.

Is this enough?

Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris agreement, and now with the European Climate Foundation, said the agreement was a big boost for the Paris pact.

"The key piece was having a good transparency system because it builds trust between countries and because we can measure what is being done and it is precise enough," she told BBC News on the sidelines of this meeting.

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"I am happy with that. Nobody can say that's not clear, we don't know what to do, or that it's not true anymore. It's very clear,"

She said that countries like Russia- which had refused to ratify the Paris agreement because it wasn't sure about the rules - could no longer use that excuse.

However some observers say the deal is not sufficiently strong to deal with the urgency of the climate problem.

In the words of one delegate, "it's what's possible, but not what's necessary".

What about cutting carbon faster?

There has been a big push for countries to up their ambition, to cut carbon deeper and with greater urgency.

Many delegates want to see a rapid increase in ambition before 2020 to keep the chances of staying under 1.5C alive.

Right now, the plans that countries lodged as part of the Paris agreement don't get anywhere near that, described as "grossly insufficient" by one delegate from a climate vulnerable country.

Business is also looking for a signal from this meeting about the future.

"Companies are ready to invest and banks are ready to finance," said Carlos Salle from Spanish energy conglomerate, Iberdrola.

"So we need that greater ambition in the policy to enable business to move further and faster."</s>KATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) - Nearly 200 countries overcame political divisions late on Saturday to agree on rules for implementing a landmark global climate deal, but critics say it is not ambitious enough to prevent the dangerous effects of global warming.

After two weeks of talks in the Polish city of Katowice, nations finally reached consensus on a more detailed framework for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

“It is not easy to find agreement on a deal so specific and technical. Through this package you have made a thousand little steps forward together. You can feel proud,” Polish president of the talks Michal Kurtyka told delegates.

After he struck the gavel to signal agreement had been reached, ministers joined him on the stage, hugging and laughing in signs of relief after the marathon talks.

Before the talks started, many expected the deal would not be as robust as needed. The unity which underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented, and U.S. President Donald Trump intends to pull his country - one of the world’s biggest emitters - out of the pact.

Related Coverage Climate talks pass baton in race to stop global warming

At the 11th hour, ministers managed to break a deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the accounting rules for the monitoring of carbon credits, deferring the bulk of that discussion to next year, but missing an opportunity to send a signal to businesses to speed up their actions.

Still, exhausted ministers managed to bridge a series of divides to produce a 156-page rulebook - which is broken down into themes such as how countries will report and monitor their national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and update their emissions plans.

Not everyone is happy with everything, but the process is still on track and it is something to build on, several ministers said.

“While some rulebook elements still need to be fleshed out, it is a foundation for strengthening the Paris Agreement and could help facilitate U.S. re-entry into the Paris Agreement by a future presidential administration,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

COP24 President Michal Kurtyka is greeted after adopting the final agreement during a closing session of the COP24 U.N. Climate Change Conference 2018 in Katowice, Poland, December 15, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

AMBITION, AMBITION, AMBITION

Some countries and green groups criticized the outcome for failing to urge increased ambitions on emissions cuts sufficiently to curb rising temperatures. Poorer nations vulnerable to climate change also wanted more clarity on how an already agreed $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 will be provided and on efforts to build on that amount further from the end of the decade.

A statement by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who left the talks on Thursday, stressed the need for more work.

“From now on, my five priorities will be: ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition,” it said.

“And ambition must guide all member states as they prepare their (emissions cut plans) for 2020 to reverse the present trend in which climate change is still running faster than us.”

A U.N.-commissioned report by the IPCC in October warned that keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C would need “unprecedented changes” in every aspect of society.

Last week, Saudi Arabia, the Unites States, Russia and Kuwait refused to use the word “welcome” in association with the findings of the report.

Slideshow (8 Images)

The decision text now merely expresses gratitude for the work on the report, welcomes its timely completion and invites parties to use the information in it.

For many low-lying states and islands at risk from rising sea levels, this is not strong enough but had to be accepted grudgingly in exchange for other trade-offs.

During the two weeks of talks in Katowice - in the mining region of Silesia, a focus on the fossil fuel industry provided an unwelcome distraction for some countries and environmental groups which want to focus on cleaner energy.

The conference itself has been hosted by coal-reliant Poland, which has sought to protect its mining industry. The U.S. administration’s only event in Katowice was seen as trying to rebrand coal as a potentially clean energy source.</s>UN Climate Change News, Katowice, 15 December – Governments have adopted a robust set of guidelines for implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The implementation of the agreement will benefit people from all walks of life, especially the most vulnerable.

The agreed ‘Katowice Climate Package’ is designed to operationalize the climate change regime contained in the Paris Agreement. Under the auspices of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, it will promote international cooperation and encourage greater ambition.

The guidelines will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change.

The President of COP24, Mr. Michal Kurtyka of Poland, said: “All nations have worked tirelessly. All nations showed their commitment. All nations can leave Katowice with a sense of pride, knowing that their efforts have paid off. The guidelines contained in the Katowice Climate Package provide the basis for implementing the agreement as of 2020”.

The Katowice package includes guidelines that will operationalize the transparency framework.

It sets out how countries will provide information about their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that describe their domestic climate actions. This information includes mitigation and adaptation measures as well as details of financial support for climate action in developing countries.

The package also includes guidelines that relate to:
• None The process for establishing new targets on finance from 2025 onwards to follow-on from the current target of mobilizing USD 100 billion per year from 2020 to support developing countries
• None How to conduct the Global Stocktake of the effectiveness of climate action in 2023
• None How to assess progress on the development and transfer of technology

The UN’s Climate Chief, Ms. Patricia Espinosa said: “This is an excellent achievement! The multilateral system has delivered a solid result. This is a roadmap for the international community to decisively address climate change”.

“The guidelines that delegations have been working on day and night are balanced and clearly reflect how responsibilities are distributed amongst the world’s nations”, she said.

“They incorporate the fact that countries have different capabilities and economic and social realities at home, while providing the foundation for ever increasing ambition”, she added.

The agreed guidelines mean that countries can now establish the national systems that are needed for implementing the Paris Agreement as of 2020. The same will be done at the international level.

Functioning together, these systems will ensure that nations can act in an atmosphere of trust and assess progress of their climate actions.

“While some details will need to be finalised and improved over time, the system is to the largest part place”, Ms. Espinosa said.

The main issues still to be resolved concern the use of cooperative approaches, as well as the sustainable development mechanism, as contained in the Paris Agreement’s article 6. These would allow countries to meet a part of their domestic mitigation goals through the use of so-called “market mechanisms”.

Market mechanisms provide flexible instruments for reducing the costs of cutting emissions, such as carbon markets.

Here, the Paris Agreement recognizes the need for global rules to safeguard the integrity of all countries’ efforts.

These global rules are important to ensure that each tonne of emissions released into the atmosphere is accounted for.

In this way, progress towards the emission limitation goals of the Paris Agreement can be accurately measured.

“From the beginning of the COP, it very quickly became clear that this was one area that still required much work and that the details to operationalize this part of the Paris Agreement had not yet been sufficiently explored”, explained Ms. Espinosa.

“After many rich exchanges and constructive discussions, the greatest majority of countries were willing to agree and include the guidelines to operationalize the market mechanisms in the overall package”, she said.

“Unfortunately, in the end, the differences could not be overcome”.

Because of this, countries have agreed to finalise the details for market mechanisms in the coming year in view of adopting them at the next UN Climate Change Conference (COP25).

The Fiji-led Talanoa Dialogue, a year-long inclusive dialogue around ambition as it relates to the Paris Agreement, concluded at COP24, with the Global warming of 1.5C report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a major input.

“As the decision adopted indicates, there is a clear recognition of the IPCC’s role in providing scientific input to inform countries in strengthening their response to the threat of climate change”, Ms. Espinosa underlined.

“I thank all experts for their hard work and important contribution to the IPCC’s work”, she added.

The final High-Level session in Katowice resulted in the Talanoa Call for Action, which calls upon all countries and stakeholders to act with urgency.

Countries are encouraged to factor the outcome of the dialogue into efforts to increase their ambition and to update their nationally determined contributions, which detail nations’ climate actions, in 2020.

A High-Level stock-taking of actions taken before 2020 gave countries the opportunity to assess their current level of ambition. Another stock-taking is planned for 2019.

“While there are clearly gaps that remain, the stock-take of actions taken before 2020 and the Talanoa Dialogue have clearly shown that the world has built a strong foundation for climate action under the Paris Agreement”, said Ms. Espinosa.

Many developed countries pledged financial support to enable developing countries to act. This is especially important for the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund.

Countries have sent significant positive signals towards GCF’s first formal replenishment, with Germany and Norway announcing that they would double their contributions.

The engagement of multilateral development banks (MDBs), international organisations, businesses, investors and civil society at COP24 helped to build the political will towards the outcome in Katowice.

Many made key announcements, that were critical to build momentum. These include:
• None The World Bank’s pledge of $200 billion in climate action funding for the period 2021-2025;
• None The MDBs announcement to align their activities with the goals of the Paris Agreement;
• None The commitment by fifteen international organizations to make their operations climate neutral;
• None The announcement by the C40 Cities coalition, which includes cities across the globe, to work with the IPCC to identify how the Global Warming of 1.5C report can apply to cities’ climate actions.

Many more announcements were made and inspiring examples of climate action showcased at the Global Climate Action High-level events (For more information, see here).

The next United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Chile and consultations will provide clarity on the city and exact date of the conference in due course.

With 197 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.

For more information please contact:

Follow UNFCCC on Twitter: @UNFCCC| español: @CMNUCC| | Francais: @CCNUCC | Deutsch: @UNKlima,

 UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa on Twitter: @PEspinosaC

 UNFCCC on Facebook: facebook.com/UNclimatechange

 UNFCCC on LinkedIn: UNFCCC

 UNFCCC on Instagram: @UNFCCC</s>(UPDATED) But environmental groups say the rulebook lacked the bold ambition needed to protect states already dealing with the severe effects of climate change

KATOWICE, Poland (UPDATED) – Nations on Sunday, December 16, struck a deal to breathe life into the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon United Nations (UN) talks that failed to match the ambition the world's most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

Delegates from nearly 200 states finalized a common rule book designed to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius. (READ: Fighting climate change: What is the Paris Agreement?)

"Putting together the Paris agreement work program is a big responsibility," said COP24 president Michal Kurtyka as he gavelled through the deal after talks in Poland that ran deep into overtime.

"It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no one behind," he added.

But states already dealing with devastating floods, droughts, and extreme weather made worse by climate change said the package agreed in the mining city of Katowice lacked the bold ambition to cut emissions the world needed.

Egyptian ambassador Wael Aboulmagd, chair of the developing nations G77 plus China negotiating bloc, said the rule book saw the "urgent adaptation needs of developing countries relegated to a second-class status."

Executive director of Greenpeace Jennifer Morgan said: "We continue to witness an irresponsible divide between the vulnerable island states and impoverished countries pitted against those who would block climate action or who are immorally failing to act fast enough."

The final decision text was repeatedly delayed as negotiators sought guidelines that could ward off the worst threats posed by the heating planet while protecting the economies of rich and poor nations alike. (READ: [OPINION] What's at stake for the Philippines at COP24)

"Without a clear rulebook, we won't see how countries are tracking, whether they are actually doing what they say they are doing," Canada's Environment Minister Catherine McKenna told AFP.

At their heart, negotiations were about how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has recently backed down on anti-pollution fuel tax hikes in the face of country-wide "yellow vest" protests, said France must "show the way" as he welcomed the progress made at the talks.

"The international community remains committed to the fight against climate change," he tweeted on Sunday.

"Congratulations to the UN, scientists, NGOs (non-governmental organizations),, and all negotiators. France and Europe must show the way. The fight goes on," he said.

Developing nations had wanted more clarity from richer ones over how the future climate fight will be funded and pushed for so-called "loss and damage" measures.

This would see richer countries giving money now to help deal with the effects of climate change many vulnerable states are already experiencing.

Another contentious issue was the integrity of carbon markets, looking ahead to the day when the patchwork of distinct exchanges – in China, the Europe Union, parts of the United States – may be joined up in a global system.

The Paris Agreement calls for setting up a mechanism to guard against practices, such as double counting emissions savings, that could undermine such a market.

A major sticking point, delegates eventually agreed on Saturday, December 15, to kick the issue down the road until next year.

One veteran observer told AFP that Poland's presidency at COP24 had left many countries out of the process and presented at-risk nations with a "take it or leave it" deal.

Progress had "been held up by Brazil, when it should have been held up by the small islands. It's tragic."

One of the largest disappointments for countries of all wealths and sizes was the lack of ambition to reduce emissions shown in the final COP24 text.

Most nations wanted the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to form a key part of future planning.

It highlighted the need to slash carbon pollution by nearly half before 2030 in order to hit the 1.5C target.

But the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait objected, leading to watered-down wording.

The final statement from the Polish COP24 presidency welcomed "the timely conclusion" of the report and invited "parties to make use of it" – hardly the ringing endorsement many nations had called for.

"There's been a shocking lack of response to the 1.5 report," Greenpeace's Morgan, told AFP.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who made 3 trips to Katowice over the course of the talks, said the world's climate fight was just beginning.

"From now on my five priorities will be: Ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition," he said in a message read out by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa.

With the political climate process sputtering on well into its 3rd decade as emissions rise remorselessly, activists have stepped up grassroots campaigns of civil disobedience to speed up action.

"We are not a one-off protest, we are a rebellion," a spokesman for the Extinction Rebellion movement, which disrupted at least one ministerial event at the COP, told AFP.

"We are organising for repeated disruption, and we are targeting our governments, calling for the system change needed to deal with the crisis that we are facing," the spokesman added. – Rappler.com</s>Negotiators from around the world struck an eleventh-hour deal Saturday, laying out rules to implement the Paris Agreement and keep the landmark 2015 climate accord intact.

The two-week, drawn-out fight that included a rehashing of old battles and the introduction of new ones stretched late into the night here at the COP 24 UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland. The pitched battle hints at challenges to come in the global fight against climate change as the world order continue to face a wave of political pressure that has put a strain on international cooperation.

“It has been a long road,” said Polish Energy State Secretary Michał Kurtyka, who served as President of the conference. “This deal hangs in fragile balance, we will all have to give in order to gain.”

The issues on the table in Katowice were largely technical questions centering on accounting, finance and seemingly arcane word choices that signal how aggressively countries will cut their emissions. But geopolitics never lurked far from the surface, and the urgency of climate change never proved great enough to keep the politics from bubbling up and disrupting proceedings.

“People are pulling away at the edges of the multilateral system and you wonder whether or not it’s going to unravel further,” said Rachel Kyte, who headed the World Bank’s climate-change program and who now leads Sustainable Energy for All, before the final decision. “Is the beginning of something bigger? How do we cope with it?”

The potential for disruption was clear from the beginning. The U.S., the world’s biggest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, promised to exit the Paris Agreement last year under President Trump’s direction. This left a void in leadership even as the U.S. officially remains in the talks until it’s eligible to withdraw in 2020. That void opened the door for others to rebel, particularly in places where climate change does not jive with the priorities of populist or authoritarian governments.

In a highly-publicized affair, the U.S. held an event promoting fossil fuels, during which a White House official argued that the country was injecting a dose of “reality” in the face of “alarmism” around climate change. The event won the support of Australia, whose ambassador for the environment joined the panel. And a senior administration official said that other countries had conveyed that they appreciate the U.S. perspective even if they don’t feel comfortable stating so publicly. “They don’t talk about it as much,” said a senior administration official. But, “there’s an appreciation for the realism.”

In another conflict, Brazil faced off against the rest of the world when it threatened to reject any deal because of language that would fix an accounting loophole that gives the country double credit for preserving forests in the Amazon. The rest of world protested, but Brazil refused to budge and in the final hours negotiators decided to punt the issue to a future conference.

One of the biggest clamors of the conference came as four oil producing countries, including the U.S, Russia and Saudi Arabia, questioned the validity of climate science and refused to recognize the legitimacy of a report from the IPCC, the UN’s climate science body, showing the effects of climate change if temperatures rise more than 1.5°C.

Changing geopolitics even hit in places where governments care deeply about the threat of climate change. The wave of populism in the European Union fractured the block, weakening its negotiating position. Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a longtime climate negotiations expert, cited political change in Italy, the ongoing Brexit fiasco and the weak positions of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emanuel Macron as contributing to the E.U.’s struggle to wrangle other countries. “There’s always some of these clashes, but it’s more acute here,” he says.

And then there’s the U.S. relationship with China, which is in disarray over ongoing trade issues. The two countries, while often at odds in previous negotiations, often served as mediators between developing and developed countries and helped broker key deals. “There was a capacity to be a convener, each of us,” says Todd Stern, who served as the chief U.S. negotiator under Obama, of the U.S. and China. “That’s not available right now.”

All of these disruptions helped push the talks long into overtime, with a mix of yawns and applause when Kurtyka finally called the conference to an end more than a day later than originally scheduled. The deal that resulted came as a relief: the multilateral approach to fighting climate change will live to see another day.

At the same time, the new agreement left much to be desired from nearly all parties. “I trust that whenever you found dissatisfaction in one part of the text, it was balanced with satisfaction in another,” said Kurtyka.

Perhaps more importantly, all but the most out-of-touch acknowledged that the deal leaves much work to be done if the world actually hopes to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, a level that the new IPCC report shows could wipe some countries off the map and cause widespread devastation across the planet.

“Carbon emissions keep rising and rising,” Mohamed Nasheed, former president of the Maldives, told reporters before the deal was finalized. “All we seem to be doing is talking and talking and talking.”

As countries continue to wind through the difficult international negotiation process, the obvious answer to make up for the gap caused by political disruption lies outside of the political system. Indeed, some local governments, businesses and apolitical multilateral organizations are already trying to take charge.

For most of the two decades that the U.N. has held these meetings, talk has focused on how to make action on climate change happen at a nebulous point in the future. Now, in large part thanks to the Paris Agreement, that action has already begun. And, while the international system is doomed to be defined by the least common denominator, many cities, states and businesses have stepped up to the challenge. In the months leading up to this conference, the World Bank committed $200 billion in climate investments, a slew of businesses lobbied for market solutions to climate change and alliances of sub-national governments in Japan, Argentina and Mexico joined the U.S. in making commitments to fill the gap in their national governments’ efforts.

“To combat climate change we need much much more than government,” says Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a central framer of the Paris Agreement. “It’s not for state only. It’s for society.”

The only issue is that none of this is moving fast enough. The IPCC report shows that temperatures have already risen 1°C as a result of human activity and that figure will surpass 1.5°C as early as 2030 without a dramatic shift in direction. A lot of work is necessary to facilitate such a shift. And that’s going to be a huge challenge so long as political tensions persist.</s>Nearly 200 nations overcame political divisions on Saturday to agree on rules for implementing a landmark global climate deal, but critics say it is not ambitious enough to prevent the dangerous effects of global warming.

READ MORE: World leaders gather for ‘impossible’ task of finalizing Paris climate agreement

After two weeks of talks in the Polish city of Katowice, nations finally reached consensus on a more detailed framework for the 2015 Paris Agreement which aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

“It is not easy to find agreement on a deal so specific and technical. Through this package you have made a thousand little steps forward together. You can feel proud,” Polish president of the talks, Michal Kurtyka, told delegates.

After he struck the gavel to signal agreement had been reached, ministers joined him on the stage, hugging and laughing in signs of relief after the marathon talks.

WATCH: ‘We are off-track, we need more ambition’ on climate change action, says U.N.’s chief

Before the talks started, many expected that the deal would not be as robust as is needed. The unity which underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented and U.S. President Donald Trump intends to pull his country – one of the world’s biggest emitters – out of the pact.

Still, exhausted ministers managed to bridge a series of divides to produce a 156-page rulebook – which is broken down into themes, such as how countries will report and monitor their national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and update their emissions plans.

However, an eight-page decision framework text was criticized by some countries and green groups for failing to urge increased ambitions on emissions cuts sufficiently to curb rising temperatures.

READ MORE: Donald Trump slams Paris Agreement in tweet commenting on French riots

“The majority of the rulebook for the Paris Agreement has been created, which is something to be thankful for,” said Mohamed Adow, international climate lead at Christian Aid.

“But the fact countries had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line shows that some nations have not woken up to the urgent call of the IPCC report,” he added.

A U.N.-commissioned report by the IPCC in October warned that keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5C would need “unprecedented changes” in every aspect of society.

READ MORE: New U.N. report on climate change carries life-or-death warning

Last week, Saudi Arabia, the Unites States, Russia and Kuwait refused to use the word “welcome” in association with the findings of the report.

The decision text now merely expresses gratitude for the work on the report, welcomes its timely completion and invites parties to use the information in it.

For many low-lying states and islands who are at risk from rising sea levels, this is not strong enough but had to be accepted grudgingly in exchange for other trade-offs.

WATCH: We are confident ‘without question’ to reach Paris Agreement, says Liberals

“There should be a direct link between the findings of the report and the specific actions that would underpin ambition both in terms of action and finance,” Simon Stiell, Grenada’s environment minister, told Reuters.

“The challenges will be with some of the bigger players in terms of stepping up to their responsibilities and what is required to truly operationalise the Paris Agreement,” he added.

At the eleventh hour, ministers managed to break a deadlock between Brazil and other countries over the accounting rules for the monitoring of carbon credits, deferring a bulk of that discussion to next year.</s>There were concerns that talks might fall apart, but officials saved the deal by punting a dispute with Brazil over carbon credit monitoring. Most of the discussions around that subject will take place in 2019.

The pact will ideally keep the global average temperature increase to significantly less than 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels. It's not certain this is enough, though. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently published a report indicating that global warming is worse than thought, and would require "unprecedented changes" to keep the temperature in check. However much the Paris and Katowice deals might do to reduce emissions, they're based on an older understanding of the situation.

As usual, there's also the question of those countries that refuse to play along. President Trump's intent to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement could hurt the strategy's effectiveness, even with cities and states vowing to honor the arrangement. Other countries that depend heavily on fossil fuel sales, such as Kuwait, Russia and Saudi Arabia, have also given the cold shoulder to the UN climate report. If the Paris participants achieve their targets, it'll be in spite of some prominent opposition.</s>Nations agree upon a set of rules to govern Paris climate accord after 2 weeks of UN climate talks.</s>On Saturday, officials from nearly 200 countries agreed to a set of guidelines to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland.

Here’s what you need to know about the agreement, which is being called the Katowice Climate Package.

What exactly is it?

The new agreement lays out specific measures to fulfil the promises of the Paris Agreement. The terms of the agreement were hotly debated over several days by member countries before being agreed upon.

The UN celebrated the Katowice Climate Package as the beginning of a “new era of global climate change action,” saying it will promote international cooperation on climate change, boost transparency among countries and benefit people from all walks of life.

The new measures will be implemented in 2020.

What was agreed to?

The main achievements of the Katowice Climate Package include an agreement on how to report greenhouse gas emissions and efforts to reduce to them as well as a commitment from wealthy countries to provide financial assistance to poorer countries to help them in cutting emissions, prepare for things such as rising sea levels and pay for damages already caused by climate change.

Officials from 196 countries have agreed to the Katowice Climate Package. Representing every corner of the globe, they include everyone from the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters, such as China and the United States, to middling powers like Canada to tiny Pacific island nations like Tuvalu.

Wait, the U.S. is onboard?

Although U.S. President Donald Trump has questioned the existence of climate change, pulled his country out of the Paris Agreement and promoted the use of coal, the U.S. not only agreed to the Katowice Climate Package but was also one of the biggest champions of creating transparency rules to ensure that no country will be able to shirk their emission-cutting commitments.

Who represented Canada at the conference?

Canada was primarily represented by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. “Global problems require global solutions,” McKenna tweeted after the Katowice Climate Package had been finalized.

“And somewhat unbelievably, countries around the world came together at (the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference) and stepped up. These days that isn't always the case. It should be celebrated and replicated!”

Were there any sticking points?

Many countries differed sharply in their views of how to make a functioning carbon credit market, which would aim to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions while raising money to help limit global warming. Talks on how to create an emissions trading system will be resumed at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Chile.

What else was left out?

Large oil exporters like the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait successfully blocked an attempt to include language about weaning the world off fossil fuels in the agreement. The final text of the agreement also lacks specific 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.</s>Nations agree upon a set of rules to govern Paris climate accord after 2 weeks of UN climate talks

KATOWICE, Poland (AP) — Nations agree upon a set of rules to govern Paris climate accord after 2 weeks of UN climate talks.
Representatives from 196 nations agree on a rulebook to implement the Paris Agreement for climate change mitigation.