DOHA, Qatar -- It's a waiting game in the waning afternoon hours of the final day to negotiate a U.N. climate change outcome.

As activists sang a song under a giant spider sculpture and diplomats hustled through the interminable passageways between meeting rooms at the Qatar National Convention Center, observers said the elements of a deal might be in place. Then again, it could all fall apart.

"We are not satisfied with the final text. Many of the requests from developing countries are not being properly accounted for, but we are still willing to make some compromises in order to ensure the success of this meeting," Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, told ClimateWire.

The annual U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conventions are always are a bit heartburn-inducing, and this year's meeting in the gleaming desert city is no different. The stakes are less high-profile than in previous years, but activists say the outcome is just as, if not more, critical.

Countries are set to start working through a new climate change treaty which, by 2020, would obligate all emitters to cut carbon. But this year, the big fights are over how to best close the past several years of negotiations in a way that satisfies poor and industrialized countries.

The Kyoto Protocol remains a sticking point. The 1997 treaty, to which the United States is not a party, is finishing its first phase and entering into a second. Only a few countries have agreed to be bound by its rules in a second commitment period. Meanwhile, countries wrangled through the night over how to handle some 13 billion metric tons of unused greenhouse gas emissions credits, mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Reports of 'a deal'

Early this morning, the European Union reportedly came to an internal agreement that Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council said should produce "general unhappiness, but a deal."

Meanwhile, a negotiating track called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action is where most of the frustration and energy are at the moment. It is in these discussions that diplomats from developing countries are trying to ensure the financial support they say they need to protect against climate disasters and develop low-carbon economies.

Activists say wealthy countries are not doing nearly enough and accuse them of trying to run down the clock.

"Doha diplomats have designed a coffin for the planet," said Michael Dorsey, a professor in Wesleyan University's College of the Environment.

"After two weeks of negotiations, the final texts emerging from the climate talks here in Doha, Qatar, will put the planet on a doomsday course," he said.

Activists echoed those sentiments as they gathered near a giant spider sculpture in the central hall that has become the meeting's piazza. Young people from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America burst into song in a show of solidarity with developing countries that said wealthy nations were railroading them into delays.

"No point in waiting or hesitating; we must get wise, take no more lies, and do it now, now, now!" they sang.

On finance, wealthy countries agreed to pay $30 billion in "fast-start" aid between 2010 and 2012. They claim to have delivered, though poor countries contend the funding has not been transparent enough to say for sure. Meanwhile, they also have agreed to mobilize $100 billion annually in public and private funding by 2020.

Finances remain elusive

Those middle years are where the conflict lies. Developing countries want some assurances that money will continue to flow hard and heavy. The United States, facing a fiscal cliff at home, is resisting language that would lock governments into a specific amount or even promising a base level of assistance.

In the language put forward late last night, countries agreed to "continue the work programme on long-term finance during 2013 to contribute to the ongoing efforts to scale up mobilization of climate finance to USD 100 billion per year by 2020."

That's at best a signal for poor countries and avoids locking the United States into anything other than conversations. Nick Mabey of the U.K. think tank E3G said he expects the wording will be "not good enough" for developing nations.

Likewise, he noted, a compromise text on "loss and damage" -- a plan to help places that have been hit by climate disasters -- also will likely lead to grumbling, since it creates no new mechanism to address it.

Finally, India, backed by China and some others, is pushing hard to get discussions of contentious issues like intellectual property rights for clean technology transfer on the table. The worst-case scenario, the United States, the European Union and small island nations say, is for India to insist on opening up documents that deal with the post-2020 agreement, which could in turn lead to other countries fiddling with the historic Durban deal reached at last year's meeting in South Africa.

"This is not a moment when you can nitpick the details without the whole thing unraveling," Schmidt said.

A few bright spots

Meanwhile, a few bright spots emerged along the sidelines. The Dominican Republic announced a plan to cut its carbon emissions 25 percent by 2030. The tiny Caribbean island, which depends heavily on fossil fuel imports for electricity, emits about 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. It is making the move without promises of aid in exchange.

"This is a very ambitious goal for a developing economy. We see this not in economic terms, but in moral terms," said Oscar Ramirez of the Dominican Republic's National Council for Climate Change.

Qatar, which has come under tremendous fire the past few days for shaky leadership in the talks and also for failing to announce a major shift in its own emissions trajectory, is also expected to have a major announcement today. The country and three other Persian Gulf nations are poised to lay out mitigation strategies.

Earlier this week, Qatar announced a research center devoted to climate change that many activists here panned as an insufficient offer from an OPEC country with one of the world's largest carbon footprints.

But Wael Hmaidan, head of the Climate Action Network and an environmental activist from Lebanon, said the center's significance should not be underestimated.

"When the conference goes, what will happen in the region? Will it forget climate change?" The research center, he said, "is going to keep the debate in the region."

Running through the halls in a pure white pantsuit and jacket, U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres joked about a running notion that the brightness of the clothes she wears each day is symbolic of how she feels the talks are going.

White, she said, "is for serenity, because we are embarked on a major undertaking." But, she said, "Everybody needs to stay calm."

Reporter Jean Chemnick contributed.