What is the Paris Agreement?
The Paris agreement comes up in almost all conversations about climate change. For those who are just being introduced to climate change issues, the Paris Agreement refers to the binding agreement reached by United Nations (UN) member countries in 2015, in Paris, at the COP 21 conference. COP means ‘Conference of the Parties’ and it’s the yearly meeting of the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the main UN organization overseeing the world’s response to climate change. This Paris conference is consequential because for the first time the entire international community, under the umbrella of the united nations, agreed to a set of binding actions urgently geared toward addressing the effects of climate change. The agreement was ratified by all United Nations member states except Libya, Iran and Yemen, and as the text of the agreement says, it was “recognizing the need for an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge.”
At the Paris conference, the international community agreed to work collectively to increase the use of renewable energies, and rely less on fossil fuels, in order to decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and avoid the world’s temperature from increasing beyond 1.5 Degrees Celsius above the world’s temperature, before societies began to industrialize. Anything above a 1.5 Degrees increase, the Paris Agreement says, would jeopardize human life and the life of other living things on the planet.
It was also agreed at the conference, that individual countries should put more effort into making their countries more adaptable to the effects of climate change, and just as important, Developed countries and private entities should assist Developing Countries with financing and with the necessary technology and other resources as they try to mitigate and adapt to the new climate realities.
The Paris agreement requires that countries supply progress reports, on a five year basis to the UN, on the way they are restructuring their nations to address climate change, “every five years each country is expected to submit an updated national climate action plan known as National Determined Contribution or NDC.” The NDC’s are to list projected cuts in carbon dioxide emissions as well as the countries’ projections in terms of adapting their societies to the changing climate. Several other progress reports, mainly on a two year basis, are required about countries’ mitigation and adaptation and the nature of assistance Developed Countries and other entities are extending to developing countries.
The concept of countries achieving ‘net Zero’ emissions is used very often in discussions about climate change, the exact words ‘net zero’ are not mentioned in the text of the Paris agreement, but on this topic the agreement says, “in order to achieve the long-term temperature goals set out in Article 2, parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” Basically, what this means, is that the agreement expects countries at some point to reach a certain threshold or ‘peak’, in greenhouse gas emissions and after that countries should seek to counter ‘balance’ any new nationally produced carbon emissions with an equal amount of emissions removed from the environment, this is considered to be ‘net’ zero emissions. The agreement requires nations to achieve this counter balancing approach by 2050. To achieve net zero the text of the agreement recommends the use of “the best available science.” Fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas used in electricity generation, transportation and manufacturing are the main sources of greenhouse gases. Sinks include the forests which absorb and store some amount of carbon dioxide. The ocean and carbon capture facilities that trap and store carbon dioxide are also considered to be carbon sinks. The agreement requires nations to engage in the preservation of sinks, including the earth’s forests.
As the text shows, the Paris Agreement encourages member countries to work together, as much as possible, to combat climate change “in a coordinated and effective manner, including through, inter alia, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, as appropriate.” The conference was aware, it seems, that competition among the countries could be counterproductive to its overall goals. It also recognizes that some countries are more susceptible to the effects to climate change than others, it states, “parties recognize the importance of support for and international cooperation on adaptation efforts and the importance of taking into account the need of developing country parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.”
Countries are required by the agreement, to share with one another expertise and knowledge learned from experience combating climate change and to lend support by helping others to attain technology, for example, those used in ‘early warning systems’, and assist in providing training in modern skills like in ’emergency preparedness’ methods, for example. According to the text of the agreement, “capacity-building under this agreement should enhance the capacity and ability of developing country parties, in particular countries with the least capacity, such as the least developed countries, and those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, such as small island developing states, to take effective climate change action.”
The COP conference was well aware that without adequate public knowledge of the dangers climate change poses and the necessity of the Paris Agreement’s binding recommendations governments’ actions would probably be very difficult to implement, so in the text of the agreement, it makes it compulsory that “parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation, and public access to information, recognizing the importance of these steps with respect to enhancing actions under the agreement”.
In order to build trust among countries and to show that all member states are working in good faith to counter climate change, the Paris agreement formed what it called “an enhanced transparency framework”. Because of this, all reports sent to the conference by countries could be made available, transparently, to all members. The agreement also formed a special committee to monitor compliance with the proposals of the agreement which reports annually to COP. The committee, it says, “shall be expert-based and facilitative in nature and function in a manner that is transparent, non-adversarial and non punitive. The committee shall pay particular attention to the respective national capabilities and circumstances of Parties”. The Paris agreement is legally binding but not legally enforceable, in the end, its implementation rests on the will and capability of participating Nations.
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