In between sleepless nights and fastidious wrangling over words that should be put in brackets it’s a wonder a draft climate change agreement was hammered out. Andreas Weitzer, a journalist based in Malta and a UN representative, gives his insight from behind the scenes.

When the gavel struck down in the evening on December 12, the delegates in the main plenary hall in La Bourget, Paris, jumped to their feet, cheering, crying and hugging each other, almost in disbelief.

A total of 197 countries had agreed to take measures to prevent our planet from becoming inhabitable.

They gave standing ovations to French Foreign Minister and conference chair Laurent Fabius, UN Secretary for Climate Change Christiana Figueres, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, France’s climate change envoy Laurence Tubiana, and, by the looks of it, to each other.

Decades of inaction, years of dispute and many months of unseen, yet indefatigable hard work by world leaders and climate bureaucrats were finally moulded into a hope-giving document for the world.

For most of us, and even for a trained lawyer, it is impossible to envisage how much wrangling and dispute went into a meagre text of 31 pages, which was long in declarations and announcements, but pretty thin on enforceable commitments.

When it comes to nation states’ behaviour very little is legally enforceable, and this ‘agreement’ is no exception. Yet people spent sleepless nights working on it.

We may ask: is there anything more to it than passionate speeches by green celebrities like Al Gore, Sean Penn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, balloon-man Bertrand Piccard, or rapper Paul?

How do 10,000 delegates, locked into a heavily-guarded compound for two weeks, talk to each other? How does life look like for 40,000 attendees inside the bubble of such an epic meeting? What kind of bargaining is going on in the meeting rooms and plenaries until early morning hours? What made this climate conference so different from any other high-level meeting in the last years?

The conference centre at La Bourget, close to Charles De Gaulle Airport and the Paris Aeronautical Museum, could only be entered with an identification badge showing a passport photo and the degree of access.

Many rooms were closed to the press, observers and accredited activists, even though they were security-cleared many months in advance. Some meetings were even inaccessible to UN staff like me working on a photo documentation for the secretariat.

When I tried to kibitz on a meeting of the Gulf States, nations long suspected to put a break on a positive outcome, I was quite unceremoniously kicked out. As I do not speak Arabic, I would not have understood much anyhow.

Every 15 minutes shuttle buses ferried delegates from nearby hotels and the centre of Paris to the conference compound, non-stop, 24 hours. In week two, this service was hardly used anymore though as most delegates and journalists decided to sleep in their temporary offices, on couches in the corridors, or on the floor.

Additionally, every participant was given a free travel pass for all public transport in Paris, and electrical cars to rent.

Airport-like security screening and registering of people coming and going was fast and efficient, a factory floor of friendly guards wishing bonjour and “have a good day”, while policemen stood guard at the VVIP entrances for hundreds of heads of government, diplomats and ministers. My secretariat badge qualified me nobly for fast lane procedure.

Outside the convention area a large hangar was dedicated to side-events, life performances and all the youth organisations which regularly organised pre-agreed demonstrations along the so-called Champs-Elysees, the main street of the temporary world-village in La Bourget.

Paris bakery Paul’s churned out 10,000 baguettes per day, and sandwich shops, cafes, salad bars, pancake stalls, soup stands, coffee kiosks and à la carte restaurants, scattered between the offices, national pavilions and the stalls of NGOs and exhibiting corporations like Facebook and Google, catered to all tastes.

“In article 3, paragraph 3, option 2b I ask to put ‘communicating’ into brackets,” demanded one delegate, raising his hand and putting his country’s nameplate in a vertical speaker position.

As he leaned back from his microphone, the chair of the working group asked in disbelief: “But the whole line is in brackets already. You want to put double brackets?”

“Sir,” another delegate weighs in, “I ask you to address the concerns of my honoured colleague more seriously. I too do not see how ‘communicated’ can be put there if we leave ‘implemented’ where it stands now. Additionally I wish to put ‘to do so’ in brackets.”

“Dear colleagues, we are reviewing this for five days now, we have worked on it for more than a year, and instead of cutting down on options and caveats, we create each day a few dozen more of them. We are running out of time. We promised to hand in a second draft for ministerial review by tomorrow morning. But as you wish. I apologise. No double brackets therefore, just simple brackets. Any more suggestions on 3.3.3b? No? This is agreed then.”

The language ruminated by the delegates over and over again seemed almost meaningless to an outsider: mitigation, adaptation, REDD, loss and damage, capacity building, verification, differentiation, global stocktake, SIDS, LDCs, CMA, SBSTA or SBI.

From space, our planet looked like an overcrowded garden; still beautiful, but already showing the difficulties involved to keep it neat and tidy and to carry fruit for all

Yet they symbolise the core of sometimes contradicting demands to which nation States had until now failed to compromise on.

For many years even the science explaining climate change seemed doubtful. After the hottest year on record, smog-red-alert in Beijing and drastically increased erosion of arable land and habitat, this is not the case anymore.

“Even if you think that 97 per cent of all scientists are wrong, and climate change is not happening, why would you refuse to live in a cleaner and healthier world?” asked US Secretary of State John Kerry rhetorically mid-conference, setting the tone for a grand bargain which had to overcome old battle lines.

“We are experiencing the impact of climate change caused by the industrial age of the developed world. Justice demands that, with what little carbon we can still safely burn, developing countries are allowed to grow. The lifestyles of a few must not crown out opportunities for the many, still on the first steps of the development ladder,” demanded India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A position happily shared by the likes of Saudi Arabia and China, which despite their wealth and huge carbon emissions – China emits more greenhouse gases than the US and Europe combined – had always insisted to be part of the group of developing countries, deserving technology, money and exemption from most meaningful measures to curb emissions.

Despite huge diplomatic efforts by the French government, the persuasive, nudging force of Mr Fabius, the passionate engagement of the US team of negotiators – so often a hindrance in the past rather than the driving force in climate negotiations – and the whole UN climate change team, a positive outcome was far from guaranteed.

If only one country on the evening of December 12 would have raised audible objections – Nicaragua tried to raise concerns, but was muted by the speed of events – the draft would never have been adopted.

When still confronted with fierce resistance by many objectors at 3.30am on Thursday night, demanding more “differentiation” – meaning to put the onus for money, and carbon reduction, squarely on the doorstep of the West – Mr Kerry was exasperated.

“I don’t get it. It is all voluntarily. All nationally determined. No punishment. This is the most differentiated document I have seen in 40 years.”

It may sound astonishing that countries had put up such a fierce fight for a document which, if ever, will only be signed in spring 2016, which carries no enforceable, legal obligations and which can be revoked by any signatory after three years.

But world leaders, even those who do not have to submit to elections, are increasingly scrutinised by a public which is well informed and which is suffering climate induced losses already.

What became clear at this conference was, that people and organisations are not willing to wait any longer. Increasingly, they take action in their own hands. Cities and regional governments start to levy carbon charges, devise emission curbs and introduce mitigation-legislation more stringent than their respective national governments. Companies, even oil companies, become vocal in demanding carbon taxes or emission-trading schemes.

Challenged by their customers and investors, they feel their brand endangered and their balance sheet threatened, if they lack an environmentally sound, long-term plan, or fail to present a plausible path towards carbon neutrality.

At the forefront in Paris was the Holy See, engaging with passion: “We cannot profess the love for God if we do not profess the love for God’s creation. We need a change of heart, a change of lifestyle.”

And with diplomatic skill: “Climate justice means that we should stay well below 2˚C,” said Cardinal Turkson (a total of one trillion tons of additional CO2 emissions). “It means, yes, solidarity with those most exposed, but not to repeat accusations of historical guilt.”

Faced with pressure on a subnational level, world leaders had to react. The consequences they would have to face from climate inaction would no longer impend from the law of nations or an International Court of Justice, but from their own people.

For us citizens the possible disappearance of small island nations may be a problem too far away to engage with passionately, even though we live on a small island ourselves.

But a deteriorating environment at home – the loss of biodiversity, devastating storms and floods, a lack of insurance cover – we can all feel only too keenly.

We have learned to sort our trash, to switch off light at home and to offset our flight emissions. We might even eat less beef. But we demand our leaders to lead on this. This is why the draft agreement was accepted, and why this accord may have more teeth than the wording of the document lets on.

At the end of week one, when French President Francois Hollande and UN climate change secretary Christiana Figueres called for Climate Action Day, a film was screened to dignitaries and heads of State putting together the statements of the world’s past and current cosmonauts, from Japan to Cuba.

They showed pictures of our world, quaint, precious and frail. Too small it seemed for soon to be 10 billion humans, the most successful species on earth. From space, our planet looked like an overcrowded garden, still beautiful, but already showing the difficulties involved to keep it neat and tidy and to carry fruit for all.

“There is no plan B, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said, “because there is no planet B.”