On Monday the Paris climate summit kicks off, with delegates arriving from every corner of the planet hoping to stitch together a new global deal to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

The United Nations climate negotiations are complicated, frustrating and opaque even at the best of times. What follows is by no means a complete guide, but here's a few things to keep in mind as the talks get under way.

1. It's the economy, stupid.

If climate change ­­was just an environmental issue then progress towards a new global deal might be less torturous.

But planet warming greenhouse gases have been embedded in every aspect of human development: energy, industry, transport, food production and more.

And while some parts of the world are now slowly decoupling economic growth from emissions by embracing clean technology, many developing countries want space to allow their carbon pollution to rise while they drag people out of poverty.

Therefore, it is perhaps better to think of the meeting as a global negotiation over development paths and how countries will structure their economies in coming decades.

These are high stakes.

2. Some of the most important people are not even going to be there.

United States President Barack Obama has expended significant diplomatic effort into getting a deal in Paris, and a good chunk of his political legacy is on the line.

But like much of his presidency, the US Republicans, who are largely sceptical of climate change, still loom large as an obstacle to achieving this.

The problem for Obama is that the legal design of the Paris deal could trigger the need for Senate approval of US involvement, something the Republicans would likely block.

And any deal without the US – the world's second largest emitter – would be a limp one.

To get around this, the Obama administration wants countries' emissions targets to sit outside the agreement in some way. And the same goes for other specific goals that would bind the US to financial commitments.

This would allow it to argue back home that the Paris agreement is an extension of existing international treaties and domestic legislation that already have congressional approval.

But it remains to be seen if all other countries will go along with this.

The US President in front of the Exit Glacier in Seward, Alaska earlier this year. He has made climate change a priority for his remaining time in office. Photo: AP.

3. It's going to be a circus.

First some basics. Towards the end of each year a major round of the UN climate negotiations is held called a Conference of Parties, or a COP. The Paris meeting is commonly called COP21.

It will be one of the biggest diplomatic events of the decade. Among the 45,000 people turning up are 147 world leaders including Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The site of the summit is a giant conference centre (all 18 hectares of it ) in the outer Parisian area of Le Bourget.

Here, the actual negotiations will be held, along with numerous side events and exhibitions being held by countries, non-government organisations and business groups.

Across the rest of Paris there will be all kinds of other meetings, from a day for city governments at the Paris town hall, to a discussion about sports and climate change at the Stade de France.

However, the sense of occasion will be dampened somewhat following the recent terrorist attacks. The French government has already blocked public marches, while other public side events are in jeopardy.

4. Acronyms are everywhere.

Acronyms thrive in the UNFCCC negotiations. And here's the first one. UNFCCC (or U-N-F-Triple C) stands for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This is the global treaty, signed in 1992, that underpins all international negotiations and action on climate change.

Here's some others that might crop up over the next fortnight.

INDC, or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. These are voluntary pledges that governments have been invited to make ahead of the summit outlining emissions reduction targets and plans to achieve them.

MRV (M-R-V) stands for measurement, reporting and verification. A critical area of the negotiations about building some kind of system to check whether countries are making their promised emissions cuts.

LULUCF. Not a bossa nova singer from the '70s, it stands for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry. It covers the way human changes to forests and the natural landscape effects climate change.

5. Every climate pledge is a little bit different.

Rather than assigning targets as previous climate deals have tried to do, this time countries have instead been allowed to determine their own goals.

That has thrown up some wildly varied approaches, thereby underscoring the challenge of drafting an agreement to account for 196 countries across all cultural, economic and political traditions.

For example, targets can be based on absolute cuts to emissions, emissions peaks, reductions in the greenhouse gas intensity of the economy, a cut on future emissions projections, or even total carbon neutrality.

Some targets are conditional on financial and technological help from richer nations. Some countries have set targets for renewables or tree planting, but not emissions.

Some INDCs have been colourful. India, for example, opens its pledge with a precede stitching together references to "Mother Earth", yoga and Gandhi.

Bolivia also made mention of "Mother Earth" (11 times in fact). And it set out 10 structural solutions it thinks will solve climate change, including an adoption of an entirely new global model of civilisation and an end to capitalism.

It could be a long two weeks.

6. There may be villains.

Much of the pre-meeting chatter has been about whether India and Saudi Arabia could spoil the party.

India is drawing a hard line in ensuring different treatment of rich and developing countries (more on that in a bit) under the agreement and to allow itself space to develop economically. Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil.

But there are plenty of other nations that could prove problematic. For instance, anti-market (and often resource-rich) states like Venezuela have a rocky track record in the negotiations.

And Russia, which has been quiet in the lead up to Paris and has a target that looks like a cut but could ultimately allow its emissions to grow, could emerge as a last minute spoiler.

7. Things can get hung-up on the technicalities.

While there will be fanfare over the presence of world leaders on the first day, most of the negotiations are a serious grind that can literally boil down to disputes over a single word or the placement of commas.

The draft text, until nailed down, is full of brackets reflecting areas of dispute between the parties. Here is a sample: "Each party [shall][should][other] regularly [prepare] communicate [maintain] [fulfil] [implement] [a] [successive] nationally determined mitigation..." etc etc.

Before a COP, one rough indicator of how close the negotiations are to a deal is the number of pages in the draft agreement text.

The current version of the Paris draft text is about 55 pages. At the same time before the failed Copenhagen summit the draft text was still about 200 pages, and before the more successful 1997 Kyoto meeting, it was about 80.

8. The main fight is over the difference between rich and poor.

This is a mainstay tension in the climate negotiations and the dispute effectively boils down to who should take most responsibility for cutting emissions.

Major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil argue that developed nations released much of the historical greenhouse gases, which also helped make them rich, and therefore should take the lead.

The developed world points out that the major emerging economies are now responsible for two-thirds of current day emissions and any solution to climate change cannot occur without significant action from them as well.

This tension may be eased if Paris can hammer out agreement over the delivery of climate funding from rich to poor nations in order to help them grapple with emissions cuts and adapt to changes in the climate already locked-in.

9. Australia will be more helpful than not.

Yes, Australia's targets are weak and there are questions about the effectiveness of its domestic climate policies.

But the country comes to Paris with renewed goodwill from the international climate community under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (below, at the G20 in Turkey earlier this month), if for no other reason that he has not been openly hostile to the issue - unlike his predecessor.

The Australian negotiators also have good reputations, and are regarded as strong on technical details and helpful in reaching compromises between disparate positions.

It is also understood the negotiating mandate the Australian team has been given by cabinet is flexible and allows itto sign up to a strong agreement.

10. Let's spend the night together.

Anybody who has attended these meetings will tell you there is a typical patten to them. They start slowly, but relatively smoothly. But towards the end of the first week things will get tougher as the key disputes crystallise.

In a high stakes game of brinkmanship countries will openly start accusing each other of all kinds of crimes. And by early in the second week some delegations will storm out and headlines will scream "climate deal on the brink of collapse".

But somehow, normally though a series of side meetings between strategically important countries, the talks get to some kind of compromise.

Just don't expect it to happen by the summit's official close (Friday December 11). These meetings have a habit of stretching well into the early hours of the next day, and sometimes longer.

But in the world of UN climate negotiations sleep is for the weak.