The Service of Cooperation and Cultural Action of the Embassy is in charge of monitoring the entire scientific and technical cooperation of France in Saudi Arabia.



As such it cooperates with Saudi authorities on the preparatory negotiations of the Conference of Parties on Climate Change, hosted by the United Nations in Paris.



In its report of 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached an unprecedented level for 800,000 years and that this was due to human activities.



Facing a scientific finding reinforced every day; an increasing number of actors are mobilized to raising awareness to the climate challenge.



All the countries want to achieve a universal climate agreement in Paris. As presidency, France has a particular responsibility to provide its support for the negotiating process and guarantee transparent negotiations.



Our objective is to achieve a “Paris Alliance” that enables us to contain global warming within the limit of 2°C, above which the impacts would be difficult to control, and adapt our societies to impacts already being felt and foster low-carbon development.



In practice, France is working with its partners on the four components of the Alliance:



A - Negotiation of a universal, legally binding agreement; it means a sustainable, dynamic agreement to guide and strengthen action against climate change possibly drawing on a long-term goal; a differentiated agreement, taking into account the respective capacities and needs of each country; a balanced agreement between mitigation and adaptation in order to contain the temperature rise below 2°C; a significant agreement, sending the necessary signals to economic stakeholders to undertake the transition towards low carbon economies.



B - Submission by all countries of their national contributions, prior to COP21; The Lima outcome confirmed the commitment of all States, with no distinction between developed and developing countries, to submitting intended nationally determined contributions to strengthen the mitigation efforts already underway.



C - Strengthening of the multipartner initiatives of the Action agenda; In Geneva, the talks highlighted the need to do “more, faster, now” and to strengthen ambitions for 2015 - 2020.



Our choice to promote an Action agenda, alongside the agreement and the national commitments, is a strong one.



The progress made through the Action agenda up to COP21 will contribute to showing that the transition towards low-carbon, resilient economies is technically and economically possible; demonstrating the mutual benefits and the strong correlation between poverty reduction and sustainable development; facilitating the implementation of the national contributions of the various countries;



D - The financial component, which should enable funding of the transition towards low-carbon, resilient economies.



The first goal of the financial component needs to be the fulfilment of the Copenhagen commitment: raising $100 billion of public and private funding from developed countries, annually from 2020.



Following a first successful capitalisation of the Green Climate Fund ($10.2 billion over four years), ensuring the credibility of the commitment, we need to step up work on accounting methods for climate finance, in order to produce a better estimate of the flows currently mobilised in the light of the $100 billion.



These four components are complementary and mutually supportive, committing all countries to a transition towards low-carbon economies. — SG