A delegation from Britain, the European Union and Canada met the COP27 president on Thursday to highlight gaps in the current negotiating texts and express their view that the round of global climate talks in Egypt should not be allowed to fail.
Canada's Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, COP26 President Alok Sharma, and EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans formed the delegation.
"They thanked the presidency for their work, but reflected on the fact that there's still a lot of gaps in the texts and that they need to build on what has gone before," said a spokesperson for Britain's COP26 Presidency, which hosted last year's climate summit in Glasgow
The first draft of a deal being hashed out at the U.N. COP27 climate summit would keep a target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius but left many of the most contentious issues in the talks unresolved ahead of a Friday deadline.
Leaders at the G20 meeting in Bali on Wednesday agreed to pursue efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius and recognized the need to speed up efforts to phase down coal use.
"The G20 should be a baseline not a ceiling, there needs to be a recommittal to 1.5 (degrees Celsius) and the last thing that anyone wants is for this to end without any consensus," the COP26 spokesperson said.
(Reporting by William James; editing by Dominic Evans)
