Playing on into extra time, climate change negotiators from 196 countries at the UN talks in Lima overran by two days to produce a five-page text on Sunday.

The result, while it lays the foundation for a universal deal to be agreed next year in Paris, is widely thought to be a weak compromise.

This puts extra pressure onto next year’s talks in Paris to keep the scientifically projected global temperature rise below 2°C, it’s our last chance and the clock is ticking. If we fail, scientists concur that humanity will face catastrophe or extinction. We are reaching a tipping point and time is running out.

The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides clear and incontrovertible evidence that human activity is responsible for the warming of the planet.

The effects of climate change that we are already seeing include the warming and acidification of the oceans, reduction in snow and ice cover, rising sea levels, increasing extreme weather such as storms and droughts.

Food security is threatened in many parts of the world, and climate refugees fleeing insecure areas will put pressure on scarce resources elsewhere, causing conflicts. The Pentagon has publicly recognised that climate change is a threat to US security.

Any delay in dealing with the human causes of climate change puts us all in great peril.

The Lima agreement paves the way for a new universal agreement and is based on Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which are pledges from each country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

INDCs should be ambitious, leading to the transformation of emission-intensive industry; they should be transparent so that the level of ambition can be reviewed, and they should be equitable, so that all countries do their fair share to reduce overall emissions.

However, guidance on INDCs is still unclear despite expectations that countries make submissions in March next year.

“There is a real possibility of failure in this process,” said Mattias Soederberg, of the ACT Alliance advisory group on climate change. “The Lima talks have been clouded by missed opportunities: a missed opportunity to build trust among parties, with now even more division along north-south lines; a missed opportunity around ambition, which simply fell off the radar completely.”

In September more than 400,000 people turned out for the People’s Climate March in New York ahead of the UN Climate Summit, and more than 15,000 people marched the streets of Lima for climate justice last week.

“It is very clear that while no country has had the courage to step up and take accountability for its role in climate change, in communities across the globe momentum for change is growing,” said Soederberg. “What policy makers seem to miss is that these negotiations are about people — about who will survive and who will be forgotten.”

“The countdown clock to Paris is now ticking. Countries had the chance to give themselves a head start on the road to Paris but instead have missed the gun and now need to play catch up,” said Mohammed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior climate change adviser.