Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding global deal to address the issues surrounding climate change. It was first adopted on December 12, 2015, by 195 countries and is the first ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. The deal went into effect on November 4, 2016, and the deadline for additional nations to sign was set for April 21, 2017. The primary goal of the Paris Agreement is to reduce the overall temperature of Earth and limit greenhouse gas emissions to greatly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. The agreement emphasizes the importance of avoiding, minimizing, and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events and drought. The Paris Agreement requires countries to monitor and report their greenhouse gas levels using the same global system. It will require nations to do a global stocktake, an assessment on how they are doing with attempts to reduce their emission levels, in 2023 and every five years thereafter.

Background

Climate change—which is sometimes referred to as "global warming"—is the change in global and regional climate patterns seen in the mid to late twentieth century and onward. It is largely attributed to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or greenhouse gases, produced by the use of fossil fuels. The Paris Agreement was the culmination of more than twenty-three years of international attempts under the United Nations to address the global climate change problem and bring collective action on it. Since 1992, governments around the world have pledged to take measures that would avoid dangerous warming. Those efforts, however, were fraught with discord and failure, the refusal of the biggest greenhouse gas contributors to even participate, ineffective agreements, and ignored treaties.

One of the main reasons global climate change agreements failed in the past was because many were too broad and strict, and nations did not end up sticking to them. Leaders of previous climate summits attempted to build top-down agreements, in which countries would agree to broad guidelines to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Treaties that came from that approach gave participating governments little flexibility in addressing climate change. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for example, required developed countries to commit to binding greenhouse gas reduction targets. Some countries, like the United States, chose not to participate in the agreement, while others ratified it but ended up ignoring it.

The main precursor to the 2015 Paris Agreement was a 2009 climate conference in Denmark. The 2009 conference was viewed as an opportunity to achieve a comprehensive agreement that would lead to a reduction in emissions. That conference, however, was seen as disorganized, and many countries ultimately refused to cooperate. The negotiations fell apart, and the resulting Copenhagen Accord was not followed.

Since attempts to bring together a global deal to tackle the effects of climate change had failed in the past, the climate conference in Paris was seen as a make-or-break moment in the United Nations' process to address climate change. Paris was hit with terrorist attacks just days before the climate conference was scheduled to begin, which raised questions as to whether the talks should go on at all. Knowing the importance of the conference, French president François Hollande insisted they must continue. In a show of unity, 150 heads of state landed in France for the opening day of the conference. It was hailed as an act of defiance in the face of terror.

Overview

The Paris Agreement was historic because it was the first time a global deal had been reached to address the issue and impacts of climate change. What made the agreement different from previous attempts at a climate change deal was that it utilized a bottom-up approach. Prior to the conference, governments around the world made up their own plans, explaining how they would cut greenhouse gas emissions based on what they believed was politically and economically feasible for their own country. The Paris Agreement provides a legal framework to verify that countries follow through on commitments to reduce emissions and provide for climate financing for poor countries. Although the bottom-up approach seems less ambitious than rigid international standards required of everyone, the hope is that the flexibility in allowing each country to make its own commitments will avoid another Kyoto Protocol, where countries ignored their commitments because they found them unattainable.

One of the main components of the Paris Agreement is the goal to hold the increase in the average global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The agreement takes that even further by adding that nations will pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. The reason 2 degrees Celsius was chosen was because scientific conclusions indicated that an increase in atmospheric temperatures of any more than that would lock the planet into irreversible changes, such as rising sea levels, more devastating weather events, and widespread food and water shortages. To achieve the two-degree goal, countries were tasked with reaching global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to take rapid reductions after that. The agreement recognized that reaching peak levels will take longer for developing countries.

Another key component of the Paris Agreement was that it required countries to submit updated plans and report their progress. All countries were required to submit updated plans by 2020—and every five years thereafter—that would include stronger goals on tackling emissions. The deal also calls for a global stocktake, which requires countries to assess themselves to see how well they are doing in cutting their emissions compared to their national plans, beginning in 2023 and continuing every five years thereafter. In addition, the deal requires countries to monitor and report their levels of greenhouse gas emissions using the same global system.

In June 2017, US president Donald Trump formally announced that the United States intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he had criticized during his presidential campaign as detrimental to the US economy. Some international backlash followed the announcement, and within the United States, coalitions formed involving cities, states, and businesses dedicated to meeting the goals of the agreement. Upon his inauguration in January 2021, President Joe Biden reversed that decision when he signed an executive order that recommitted the United States to the Paris Agreement.

By the 2020s, world leaders were not the only ones taking stances against climate change. Young people in several nations filed lawsuits against national governments for what they claimed was a global inaction on fighting global emissions. In 2023, six Portuguese residents between the ages of eleven and twenty-four sued the twenty-seven European Union nations, plus the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Turkey, claiming those nations had not done their part to protect their citizens from climate change. In the United States, a group of young people successfully sued the state of Montana, forcing lawmakers to consider climate change when approving or renewing fossil fuel projects.

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