The document being argued over at major climate change negotiations in Paris is likely to be binned by the end of the week, a climate policy expert believes.
Australian National University associate professor Frank Jotzo says that's not unprecedented, nor unexpected, but renders the first few days of the conference "not terribly productive".
"You'd work on the assumption that whatever finetuning is done on the text right now will all go in the bin at the end of the week," he told AAP in Paris on Wednesday.
Negotiators at the United Nations conference have been buckled down for more than two days in a tug of war over what's known as the draft text.
It has multiple parentheses with opposing options for sections of the agreement like financing and transparency - and negotiating groups are at loggerheads over much of it.
Prof Jotzo, director of ANU's centre of climate economics and policy, believes the French will have to intervene and produce their own draft agreement for the second week of the summit.
"That's the job of the French presidency to now pick and choose elements that leave everyone equally unhappy in the end, but no one unhappy enough to jeopardise the whole thing," he said.
Even if the text is binned, Prof Jotzo says the first few days won't be totally useless because the process maps out areas of potential difference and compromise.
Getting 196 parties with vastly different economies and exposure to climate change to agree on a single document was never going to be an easy task.
It's understood Saudi Arabia is deploying classic delaying tactics, holding up proceedings by objecting to small changes such as the moving of commas.
But the nation rarely succeeds in bringing down negotiations entirely, said Prof Jotzo, with India a bigger threat.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt cautiously admitted India was going in hard at the talks in Paris.
"Overall, India are at pains to be constructive but they argue their position strongly, as they should," he told reporters on Wednesday.
Australia's main pushing point is five-yearly reviews to force countries to reassess their emissions reduction targets and adjust ambition accordingly.
"I remain confident it will be a hard fought two weeks but at the end of the day... we will achieve an agreement," Mr Hunt said.
The ultimate goal of an agreement is to curb emissions enough to limit global warming to at least 2C.
Vulnerable nations, like the Pacific Islands, believe that temperature should be 1.5C which is getting push back from large developed nations.
Mr Hunt said Australia is playing a "brokering" role on that issue and is happy to see that ambition referenced somewhere in an agreement.
Climate finance and differentiation - which separates what poor and rich countries must do - are still the main issues of the negotiations, with a landing point still unclear.
But Prof Jotzo remains optimistic the globe can nut out an agreement that includes a review and ratchet process by the end of the conference.
