But many countries and environmentalists said the rest of the document was still too vague on crucial details like what sorts of financial aid richer nations should provide poorer ones struggling with the costs of climate disasters and adaptation.
Scientists have said that the world’s nations need to cut global emissions from fossil fuels roughly in half this decade to keep average global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels.
Negotiators here from nearly 200 countries are likely to demand significant changes in the remaining days as the talks enter their last, most difficult stretch.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson returned to Glasgow from London on Wednesday to urge countries to set aside their differences and strike a final agreement.
The two countries agreed to cooperate on efforts to speed up the transition to cleaner energy and cut emissions faster this decade, though they did not set specific timetables.
Small island states like the Maldives, which has been inhabited for thousands of years but is projected to be swamped by rising seas within generations, want all countries to slash emissions as fast as possible.
To reach that target, each nation agreed to submit its own plan to shift away from fossil fuels and to curb deforestation, and to update those plans every five years.
And while many governments have announced splashy new “net zero” emissions pledges for 2050 or 2060, they lack clear plans to get there.
When analysts added up the short-term pledges, which tend to be the most detailed and concrete, they found that the world was likely on track to heat up around 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius this century.
On top of that, many of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, such as Ethiopia and Bhutan, want to revisit the overall temperature targets set in Paris.
Currently, countries aren’t expected to update their plans until 2025, which some fear could be too late.
But that proposal faces opposition from fossil fuel producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia.
President Biden and European leaders have insisted that developing countries such as India, Indonesia or South Africa need to accelerate their shift away from coal power and other fossil fuels.
A decade ago, the world’s wealthiest economies pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer countries by 2020.
Bangladesh, one of the countries most at risk from rising sea levels, has called on rich countries to deliver $500 billion in aid between 2020 and 2024 that would be split equally between clean energy programs and adaptation efforts.
It calls on rich countries to “at least double” funding for adaptation, but doesn’t mention specific numbers or timelines.
He compared the issue to the way the United States government sued tobacco companies in the 1990s to recover billions of dollars in higher health care costs from the smoking epidemic.
One of the thorniest issues is how to regulate the fast-growing global market for carbon offsets.
But it raises tricky accounting questions: If a country like Switzerland pays people in Brazil to protect forests from being cut down, how do you ensure that both countries don’t claim credit for the same reduction in emissions? There are also debates over how to value a large haul of existing carbon credits left over from an earlier U.N.
Some climate advocates said they would prefer negotiators to leave Glasgow without a resolution on these issues rather than with weak rules.
Developing countries have also called for a percentage of proceeds from all carbon credit trades to be set aside for an adaptation fund.