What is the Paris Agreement?
December 8th, 2020
by Martha Benduski
The Paris Agreement is an international treaty created between countries within the United Nations (UN) to limit the increase of global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. The agreement limits all large emitting nations and gives developing countries guidance and pathways to curb emissions.
History of the Paris Agreement
The United Nations works on various issues including sustainable development, global health, and the environment. To tackle environmental issues, the UN created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is a global treaty between nations that work specifically on climate change.
A convention in this case means an agreement between UN countries for regulations affecting all agreeing parties. Each year the countries that have agreed to the UNFCCC meet at the Conference of the Parties (COP). At each COP, countries negotiate and confer on key climate issues. Various organizations also advocate for different global issues, bringing diverse voices to the international climate policy stage.
Two agreements have come out of the UNFCCC and subsequent conferences. The first was the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement reached when Kyoto hosted the annual COP in 1997. The Protocol was a treaty that required only developed countries to decrease their emissions. Although legally binding, the Kyoto Protocol was not ratified in multiple countries (including the United States), which eventually led to the necessity of a new international accord: the Paris Agreement, negotiated in 2015 by nations at COP 21 in Paris, France.
What is in the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement’s primary objective is to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels with aspiration of a 1.5 degrees Celsius limit. It seeks to achieve this goal by asking each nation to independently commit to limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The individual commitments are called “Nationally Determined Contributions” or an NDC. These are renegotiated every 5 years, with the first submission completed in 2015 and the next required by the end of 2020. As of December 2020, only three countries have submitted their NDCs, which were due at the end of the year. Read more about the database of current NDCs run by the UNFCCC.
In addition to agreeing to individually limit greenhouse gas emissions, nations included in the Paris Agreement outlined key methodologies recommended to decrease emissions. This includes mitigation, adaptation, conservation of carbon sinks (i.e. fossil fuels, soil, etc.), and using market and non-market-based approaches to limit emissions.
Other sections of the agreement highlight the financial costs associated with climate change. This includes acknowledging potential damages from increased extreme weather events, elevated sea level, and effects on local ecosystems. In addition, the agreement formally acknowledges the necessity of developed countries to help developing countries in the creation of more sustainable and climate resilient growth. This includes contributions to a “Green Climate Fund” meant to support developing countries achieve a greener future.
Finally, there is a greater emphasis on transparency and accountability within the Paris Agreement. The Agreement requires that nations give information about their mitigation and adaptation efforts and each of the submissions goes through a formal review process by technical experts. However, since the agreement is non-binding, there exists no formal punitive action for nations who do not submit updates on their mitigation efforts or their NDCs. Find out more about each of the sections of the Paris Agreement here.
Where are we headed?
While the strength of the Paris Agreement lies in its ability to gather climate action commitments from 195 countries, its non-binding nature leads to little oversight and questionable progress. In response, many organizations are attempting to increase transparency of national emissions commitments and how those commitments directly lead to decreasing global temperatures. One such organization, Climate Action Tracker, is made up of independent scientists who have evaluated the commitments of over 30 of the most polluting countries and map them to potential global temperatures in 2100.
Climate Action Tracker comparing NDC commitments to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting global temperature rise in 2100.
Even with the Paris Agreement’s current commitments and goals, the globe will still see increased temperatures between 2.5 to 3 degrees Celsius, well above the goal of 1.5 degrees. However, commitments change over time, and with the United States likely to rejoin the Paris Agreement, one of the largest emitting countries will now be outlining their support for the goal of decreasing emissions. Now it is up to the public to raise their voices and ensure that nations are held accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions.
Resources
The following resources were used to write the article above. Read some of the articles below to find out more information about the Paris Agreement.
UNFCCC Resources: What is the Paris Agreement? | The Kyoto Protocol | NDCs | NDC Registry
Natural Resource Defense Fund’s blog on the Paris Agreement (2018)