The Paris Agreement of 2020
The agreement itself has proven remarkably resilient. Bringing together 196 nations in 2015 was not easy – even when Fabius put the hammer on the deal, there was a bit of harassment as Nicaragua had planned to resist the required consensus but was ignored. But this consensus remained strong. When the United States – the world`s largest economy and the second largest emitter – began pulling out of Paris in 2017 under President Donald Trump, a catastrophe could have been expected. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol collapsed after the United States signed the agreement but did not ratify it, leaving climate negotiations in limbo for a decade. The agreement states that it will only enter into force (and thus become fully effective) if 55 countries that account for at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions (according to a 2015 list)[65] ratify, accept, approve or accede to the agreement. [66] [67] On April 1, 2016, the United States and China, which together account for nearly 40% of global emissions, issued a joint statement confirming that the two countries would sign the Paris Climate Agreement. [68] [69] 175 Contracting Parties (174 States and the European Union) signed the Agreement on the first day of its opening for signature. [59] [70] On the same day, more than 20 countries published their memorandums of understanding to accede as soon as possible in order to accede in 2016. With its ratification by the European Union, the agreement received enough contracting parties to enter into force on 4 November 2016. Negotiators of the agreement noted that the INDCs presented at the Paris conference were inadequate and noted “with concern that the estimated aggregate levels of greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 and 2030 resulting from intended nationally determined contributions do not fall into the most cost-effective 2°C scenarios, but instead lead to a projected level of 55 gigatons in 2030.” and further acknowledging “that much greater efforts to reduce emissions will be needed to keep the global average temperature rise below 2°C by reducing emissions to 40 gigatons, or 1.5°C.” [25] [Clarification needed] Under the Paris Agreement, each country must regularly identify, plan and report on its contribution to the fight against global warming. [6] There is no mechanism that requires a country[7] to set a specific emissions target by a specific date[8], but each target should go beyond the targets set previously. The United States officially withdrew from the agreement the day after the 2020 presidential election,[9] although President-elect Joe Biden said America would join the agreement after his inauguration.
[10] However, the key question is whether countries will achieve these long-term goals. Promises for 2050 are one thing, but major policy changes are now needed to put economies on a low-carbon basis. “None of these [net-zero] goals will make sense without very aggressive action in this decade of the 2020s,” Stern said. “I think there is a growing, but not yet broad, understanding of this reality.” The Paris Agreement has a “bottom-up” structure unlike most international environmental treaties, which are “top-down” and are characterized by internationally defined norms and goals that states must implement. [32] Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, which sets commitment-related targets with the force of law, the Paris Agreement, which emphasizes consensus-building, achieves voluntary and nationally defined targets. [33] Specific climate goals are therefore promoted politically and are not legally linked. Only the processes that govern the preparation of reports and the consideration of these objectives are prescribed by international law. This structure is particularly noteworthy for the United States – since there are no legal mitigation or funding objectives, the agreement is considered an “executive agreement rather than a treaty.” Since the 1992 UNFCCC treaty received Senate approval, this new agreement does not need new congressional legislation to enter into force. [33] In commitments made so far, global temperatures could rise as much as 2.7°C, but the agreement includes a roadmap to accelerate progress. The Paris Agreement is the first universal and legally binding global climate agreement adopted at the Paris Climate Change Conference (COP21) in December 2015.
It will also enable the parties to progressively strengthen their contributions to the fight against climate change in order to achieve the long-term objectives of the agreement. Paragraphs 6.4 to 6.7 establish a mechanism “to contribute to the control of greenhouse gases and support sustainable development”. [40] Although there is still no specific name for the mechanism, many Parties and observers have informally united around the name “Sustainable Development Mechanism” or “SW Award”. [41] [42] The MSD is considered the successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, a flexible mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol through which Parties could jointly request emission reductions for their intended nationally determined contributions. The SDG provides the framework for the future of the Clean Development Mechanism after Kyoto (in 2020). [needs to be updated] As the Paris Agreement is expected to apply after 2020, the first formal review under the agreement will not take place until 2023. However, as part of a decision accompanying the agreement, the parties decided to start the five-year cycle with a “facilitative dialogue” on collective progress in 2018 and the submission of NDCs by 2020 to 2030. The goal of preventing what scientists consider dangerous and irreversible from climate change — achieved with a warming of about 2°C compared to pre-industrial times — is at the heart of the agreement.
The United States has emitted more cumulative carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era in the mid-1800s than any other country. Current U.S. emissions are declining, but far too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming. That`s partly because the Trump administration has reversed limits on carbon pollution from power plants, cars, trucks, and fossil fuels. U.S. emissions increased slightly in the first two years of his tenure. In 2020, the pandemic strangled the economy and led to a short-term collapse. Niklas Hohne of the NewClimate Institute, one of climate action Tracker`s partner organisations, said: “Five years later, it is clear that the Paris Agreement is driving climate action. Now we`re seeing a wave of countries committing to [net zero emissions]. Can anyone really afford to miss this wave? On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the agreement, but also signaled his willingness to renegotiate the agreement or negotiate a new one. Other countries reiterated their strong support for the Paris Agreement, saying they were not open to further negotiations.
The United States officially began withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on November 4, 2019; she joined on the 4th. November 2020. Recognizing that many developing countries and small island states that have contributed the least to climate change could suffer the most from its consequences, the Paris Agreement includes a plan for developed countries – and others that are “capable of doing so” – to continue to provide financial resources to help developing countries mitigate climate change and increase their resilience to climate change. The agreement builds on financial commitments from the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which aimed to increase public and private climate finance for developing countries to $100 billion a year by 2020. (To put this in perspective, global military spending in 2017 alone amounted to about $1.7 trillion, more than a third of which came from the United States.) The Copenhagen Pact also created the Green Climate Fund to support the mobilisation of transformation finance with targeted public funds. The Paris Agreement established hope that the world would set a higher annual target by 2025 to build on the $100 billion target for 2020 and put in place mechanisms to achieve that scale. However, on COP 24 or 25, the parties were unable to agree on the details of the implementation of Article 6 of the agreement, which deals with the use of carbon markets, and postponed these decisions to COP 26. The signs of this decisive moment are good, says Laurent Fabius. Biden`s election in the US means she will agree with the EU and China to push for the full implementation of net-zero emissions.
“We will have the conjunction of the planets that made the Paris Agreement possible,” Fabius told the Guardian. “Civil society, politics and business have come together for the Paris Agreement. We are now looking at the same conjunction of the planets with the US, the EU, China, Japan – if the big ones go in the right direction, there will be a very strong incentive for all countries to go in the right direction. But U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement is not yet over. The U.S. could choose to return, and Democratic candidate Joe Biden has vowed to join the deal “on day one” if he wins the election. If it did, the United States could officially resume its role under the Paris Agreement in mid-February. Although the agreement was welcomed by many, including French President François Hollande and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,[67] criticism also surfaced. For example, James Hansen, a former NASA scientist and climate change expert, expressed anger that most of the deal is made up of “promises” or goals, not firm commitments. [98] He called the Paris talks a fraud “without deeds, only promises” and believes that a simple flat tax on CO2 emissions, which is not part of the Paris Agreement, would reduce CO2 emissions fast enough to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
[98] The UNFCCC, adopted in 1992, is a treaty between governments that forms the basis of global climate efforts. .
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