Ministers and negotiators from more than 75 nations have made headway in talks ahead of a crunch UN climate summit but "the task ahead is considerable", France's foreign minister said Tuesday.

Laurent Fabius, who will preside over the November 30-December 11 conference in Paris, told journalists the three days of talks, which ended Tuesday, had been an important step and "progress has been made on at least five points".

But he warned "the task ahead is considerable".

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres added: "It continues to be entirely possible to come to an agreement... despite all the challenges in front of us."

Fabius announced that 117 heads of state and government -- including US President Barack Obama, China's Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi of India and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- have confirmed they will attend the summit, tasked with inking a pact to stave off dangerous levels of global warming.

A rough draft of that hoped-for agreement has been drawn up by rank-and-file diplomats, with ministers set to sign the final deal at the end of the Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris.

The deal will be underpinned by national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels blamed for climate change.

The "pre-COP" meeting sought to identify areas of potential compromise on issues still dividing nations and so avoid a repeat of the 2009 Copenhagen summit which ended without a binding global pact.

Fabius said there was momentum towards ensuring that countries ratchet up their efforts to slash carbon pollution beyond pledges submitted ahead of the summit.

"A review should take place every five years... to prepare an upward revision of national plans," he said.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude oil exporter, filed its climate pledge on Tuesday, saying up to 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year would be "avoided" by 2030.

- 'Matter of survival' -

Current national plans would yield average global temperatures three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times -- far beyond the 2 C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit that scientists say is the threshold for dangerous warming.

"The COP21 will put in place the mechanism to close the gap," Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's environment minister, told AFP. "Getting to 2 C depends on boosting our ambition."

Enshrining the principle that nations would not be allowed to backtrack on their carbon-cutting promises is also gaining ground, Fabius said.

Another make-or-break issue on the table in the three-day talks was money for developing nations to help them decarbonise their economies, and shore up defences against unavoidable climate impacts.

"Climate finance was very central" to the discussions, said Thoriq Ibrahim, Minister of the Environment and Energy for the Maldives, one of many small island states whose very existence is threatened by rising seas.

"Adaptation is a matter of survival for us," he told AFP. "Nobody wants to leave the Maldives, we are there to stay."

African leaders said they were looking to the talks for solutions to electrify the continent, grow its economies and keep their young people from fleeing abroad.

The 195-nation UN climate forum has officially adopted the goal of limiting global warming to 2 C, but many vulnerable and poor nations are pushing for that threshold to be lowered to 1.5 C.

Recent scientific studies have shown that even if the 2 C goal is attained, the impact could be devastating in many parts of the world.

A 2 C rise would submerge land currently occupied by 280 million people, while an increase of 4 C would cover areas home to 600 million, according to a study published by Climate Central, a US-based research group.

Climate vulnerable nations appeal for harder UN goal
Manila (AFP) Nov 11, 2015 - A coalition of nations most at risk from climate change appealed Wednesday for a crucial UN summit to enshrine a much tougher target on global warming, warning that more than one billion lives were at stake.

Members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum also pledged to do more themselves to contain global warming, aiming to inspire and challenge powerful countries ahead of the Paris summit starting in less than three weeks.

Following a meeting in the Philippine capital of Manila, the group issued a declaration calling for a Paris accord to cement a target of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

The 195-nation UN climate group had previously adopted a goal of limiting global warming to 2 C, which scientists say is the threshold to avoid the most catastrophic consequences.

But that would still leave more than one billion people exposed to rising sea levels and other dire impacts of global warming, according to leaders of the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

"Our vulnerable nations are the ground zero in the global struggle against climate change," Joyceline Goco, a co-chair of the forum from the Philippines, said after the thee-day event.

"Meeting here in Manila we shine a light on the grave dangers we face but also our achievements in addressing climate change and the benefits this is bringing us."

Ahead of Paris, pledges by nations to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming would still see temperatures rise by about 3 C, according to a range of studies.

Many nations are reluctant to do more because of the short-term economic benefits of relying on fossil fuels for energy, cutting down rainforests or other actions that lead to greenhouse gas emissions.

- Moral force -

"We are getting a lot of pushback on sticking to the 1.5 degrees from many countries who feel it is unfeasible," Saleemul Huq, chair of the forum's expert advisor's group, told AFP on the sidelines of the Manila meeting.

"But we must stick to it because it is the moral thing to do. Adopting a two degree long-term goal would be to accept that we are not able to protect the poor people in the poor countries, and we are writing them off."

Until this week the Climate Vulnerable Forum was a grouping of 20 nations, including the Philippines, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Kiribati, Maldives, Rwanda and Barbados.

The group announced on Wednesday it had 23 new members, from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific, representing more than one billion people.

In their declaration, the members pledged to lead by example by continuing to strive to curb their own emissions, even though they have far less resources to do so than developed countries.

They also outlined ways to work together to find solutions, such as with their own financing programmes, rather than just wait for help from developed nations.

Costa Rica, a small Central American nation with a population of fewer than five million people, has even pledged to go carbon neutral by 2021.

"They are looking to use that power of inspiration, and that power of demonstration," Matthew McKinnon, a United Nations Development Programme adviser to the forum, told AFP.

McKinnon cited efforts by forum member Bangladesh to install solar power to four million homes in recent years, with a target of seven million by 2017.

"If, in a matter of years, you can have 30 to 40 million people with solar power in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in Asia, any country can do this," he said.