LIMA, Peru -- A compromise deal salvaged by climate negotiators in Lima early Sunday sets the stage for a global pact in Paris next year, but a consensus could not be reached on nations submitting to a rigorous review of their plans for greenhouse-gas emissions limits.
In the agreement, reached more than 30 hours after talks were supposed to end, more than 190 countries agreed on what information should go into the pledges that countries submit for the expected Paris pact in December 2015.
Although the Lima document does not oblige nations to provide that information -- or even to set goals -- they are feeling increasing domestic and international pressure to act on human-generated climate change blamed for more violent, damaging weather that has put 2014 on track to be the warmest year on record.
"I think there will be a lot of peer pressure for countries to put forward that kind of information," said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute. "It is a new world."
Even China -- the world's No. 1 greenhouse-gas polluter and among resisters of transparency on measuring its emissions -- is feeling the heat as its citizens endure health-endangering smog from coal-burning power plants.
Delegates argued all day Saturday over the wording for the watered-down deal, with developing nations worried that the text blurred the distinction between what rich and poor countries can be expected to do.
Many developing countries, the most vulnerable to climate change's effects, accuse rich nations of shirking their responsibilities to curb climate change and pay for the damage it inflicts.
The final draft of the deal alleviated those concerns with language saying countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities" to deal with global warming.
"This is a good starting point for Paris," Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said as he left the closing meeting in Lima. "All have accommodated each other. This needs to be taken further. Differentiation has come."
India has resisted calls to commit to net reductions of its soaring carbon pollution, insisting that it should not be required to cut its use of cheap coal-fired power while millions of impoverished Indians live without electricity.
But India has signaled that it does intend to submit a plan to at least slow its rate of emissions. And Javadekar appeared to signal his support of the process of working toward a deal in Paris, saying he hopes to continue to engage with other countries throughout the year.
"As a text it's not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties," said Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the conference chairman. He spent most of Saturday meeting separately with delegations.
In presenting a new, fourth draft just before midnight, Peru's environment minister gave a sharply reduced body of delegates an hour to review it. Many delegates had already quit the makeshift conference center on the grounds of Peru's army headquarters.
The approved agreement also restored language demanded by small island states at risk of being flooded by rising seas, mentioning a "loss and damage" mechanism agreed upon in last year's talks in Poland that recognizes that nations hardest hit by climate change will require financial and technical help.
"We need a permanent arrangement to help the poorest of the world," Ian Fry, negotiator for the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, said at a midday session.
However, the approved draft weakened language on the content of pledges on emissions limits, saying they "may," instead of "shall," include quantifiable information showing how countries intend to meet their emissions targets.
Efforts at Lima to install a system for reviewing those pledges and pushing for more ambitious cuts were stripped out of the final document. That opened new questions about whether the U.N. will be able use government agreements to reach climate goals that have been identified by scientists.
"This whole show-and-tell process that we've created here is still an optional arrangement," Fry said. "Countries can just pick and choose what they want to report on."
Also, China and other major developing countries opposed plans for a review process that would allow the pledges to be compared against one another before Paris.
In Lima, the momentum from last month's joint U.S.-China deal on emissions targets faded quickly as rifts reopened over who should do what to fight global warming. The talks' goal is to shape a global agreement in Paris that puts the world on a path to reduce the heat-trapping gases that scientists say are warming the planet.
The new draft mentioned only that all pledges would be reviewed a month ahead of Paris to assess their combined effects on climate change.
"I think it's definitely watered down from what we expected," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's the bare minimum of what we need, but we can work with it to get the pressure on."
Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for the environmental group WWF, said: "The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it's very weak indeed."
Chief U.S. negotiator Todd Stern acknowledged that negotiations had been contentious but said the outcome was "quite good in the end."
He had warned Saturday that failing to leave Lima with an accord would be "seen as a serious breakdown" that could put the Paris agreement and the entire U.N. process at risk.
The decision adopted in Lima also references a separate 37- page document that incorporates "elements" of a deal that will morph into the Paris agreement. They set themselves a deadline of May to produce a first draft of the Paris text. In a third paper dealing with finance, richer countries reiterated a goal to provide $100 billion a year in climate aid by 2020.
"Finance is absolutely critical," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the development charity Oxfam. "Without resources being committed to support developing countries to adapt to climate change and to move onto a low carbon path, there can be no agreement."
Information for this article was contributed by Karl Ritter, Frank Bajak and Nestor Ikeda of The Associated Press; by Coral Davenport of The New York Times; and by Alex Morales, Alex Nussbaum and Ewa Krukowska of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 12/15/2014