2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement. What have been the accomplishments and the challenges of this international treaty in this first decade of existence? My series of posts will explore key contents of this Agreement and corresponding implementation efforts required from countries to translate the Paris goals into real action. In this first post I will explain why this agreement has been considered a breakthrough.
The 2015 Paris Agreement, adopted in France on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 December 2015, is an offshoot of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aimed at international cooperation to address the global climate challenge. The importance of the Paris Agreement cannot be overemphasized, for at least three reasons.
Objectives
In Paris, countries agreed to work together to meet three crucial objectives:
(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; and
(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
This is important because the temperature goals are more precise than the earlier “stabilizing the climate” objective of the 1992 UNFCCC. Also, it expands global cooperation to address existing impacts of climate change, particularly in vulnerable communities or countries (climate adaptation), and to the key issue of climate finance.
Universality
The Paris agreement was adopted by 196 countries, following many years of negotiation to craft a new international agreement to succeed the 1993 Kyoto Protocol (which imposed legal obligations to only a few developed countries and became quite divisive). The Paris Agreement explicitly states that ‘all’ parties ‘are to’ undertake actions towards its purpose of mitigation, adaptation, means of implementation and transparency. However, the obligations are differentiated according to each country’s responsibilities, capabilities and stages of development. The Paris Agreement also recognizes the exceptional circumstances of least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS) in the context of financial support, capacity- building and technology transfer.
Broad Scope
Unlike the 1992 UNFCCC, which had emphasized primarily climate mitigation (reducing GHG emissions), the Paris Agreement also includes full articles on adaptation, loss and damage, finance, capacity building and technology transfer, increasing the scope of mechanisms for international climate cooperation.
Conclusion
Ten years on, the Paris Agreement has achieved some progress, yet there are significant gaps in meeting the treaty’s objectives. There are also questions about its future after the largest historic emitter withdrew earlier this year. National governments are now the ones with the bulk of the responsibility to implement climate action guided by this treaty. It is time to drive our national governments to act promptly considering the latest climate science and the growing evidence of climate impacts in the form of forest fires, extreme weather events, sea level rise, and the like. In the next posts I will highlight some of the key aspects of this important international legal instrument.
