One looooong indaba away from the final agreement...

A new draft text of the Paris agreement has been released, after the Group of Paris plenary. The new text is the product of an intense night, with negotiations ending by 6 am. In the new version, 300 square brackets were reduced to 50 but a lot of compromises still need to be agreed. As a method of progressing work on the negotiations, COP President Laurent Fabius said that a special "indaba of solutions" would start working at 11.30pm, another long marathon of negotiations the purpose of which is to find compromises only, no more lengthy statements! The reference to the private sector is still ommitted from the draft agreement but added in the decision. Some major issues on the differentiation between developed and developing countries still need to be ironed out. Carbon markets are still in square brackets, which will require further negotiations, particularly with the ALBA group.  A new and (hopefully) final version is expected early Saturday morning.