Understanding the Goals and Objectives of the Paris Agreement

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France adopted The Paris Agreement which is a legally binding international treaty on climate change on 12 December 2015. It was enforced from 4 November 2016. Its main goal is to control “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and work towards limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But, recently, world leaders around the globe have stressed the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of 21^st century.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that crossing the 1.5°C threshold of the rise in temperature has far more severe climate change effects, which include frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves, and rainfall. To achieve this goal, global warming should limit to 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030. The Paris Agreement is a major landmark in the multilateral climate change process, as it is the first time a binding agreement collects all nations together to prevent climate change and adapt to its impacts.

The Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations:

Substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees;
Review countries’ commitments every five years;
Provide financing to developing countries to mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience and enhance abilities to adapt to climate impacts.

Key features of the Paris Agreement include:

The long-term Temperature Goal: According to the agreement, we need to keep the long-term temperature goal of an increase in global average temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius. This goal is important to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change.

Global Stocktake: The agreement establishes a process for conducting a global stocktake every five years to assess collective progress towards the long-term temperature goal and the implementation of NDCs. The stock take aims to enhance ambition and promote global cooperation in addressing climate change.

Financial Support: Developed countries are committed to providing financial support to developing countries to help them mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The agreement sets a goal to mobilize financial resources of at least $100 billion per year by 2020, with a commitment to further scale up financial flows in the future.

Technology Transfer and Capacity Building: The Paris Agreement emphasizes the importance of technology transfer and capacity building to support developing countries in their climate action efforts. It encourages the sharing of knowledge, best practices, and technologies to enable effective mitigation and adaptation actions.

Transparency and Accountability: The agreement establishes a robust transparency framework to ensure that countries are transparent in reporting their emissions and progress in implementing their climate actions. It also includes provisions for a compliance mechanism to promote accountability and address non-compliance with the agreement’s provisions.

Adaptation: The agreement recognizes the importance of adaptation to the impacts of climate change, particularly for vulnerable countries and communities. It calls for enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts.

Loss and Damage: The Paris Agreement acknowledges the need to address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change, particularly in developing countries that are most affected. It establishes a mechanism to enhance understanding, support, and coordination in this area.

Global Cooperation: The agreement promotes global cooperation and solidarity in addressing climate change. It encourages collaboration on climate research, technology development, and capacity-building initiatives. It also encourages partnerships between governments, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and other stakeholders to accelerate climate action.

Review Mechanism: The Paris Agreement includes a robust review mechanism to assess collective progress towards the agreement’s goals. It requires countries to submit updated NDCs every five years, which are expected to reflect more ambitious targets and actions. The reviews aim to drive continuous improvement and ambition over time.

Just Transition: The agreement recognizes the importance of a just transition towards low-carbon and climate-resilient economies. It highlights the need to promote decent work, social inclusion, and poverty eradication in the context of sustainable development and climate action.

Non-State Actors: The Paris Agreement encourages the active involvement of non-state actors, such as businesses, cities, regions, and civil society organizations, in climate action. It recognizes the important role these actors play in driving transformative change and mobilizing support for climate action.

Enhanced Pre-2020 Actions: The agreement recognizes the need for enhanced actions before 2020 to bridge the gap between current emissions trajectories and the pathway required to meet the long-term temperature goals. It calls for increased ambition and support in the pre-2020 period.

According to the Paris Agreement, countries must take ever-more ambitious climate action during a five-year period. Each nation is required to submit an updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), also known as a national climate action plan, every five years.

The first “global stocktake” will evaluate the status of the aims of the Paris Agreement in 2023. This procedure will provide nations more motivation to adopt aggressive climate change measures to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, nations created the ETF, or enhanced transparency framework. Beginning in 2024, governments shall report openly on the steps they have taken and the results of their efforts to mitigate climate change, adjust to its effects, and provide or receive support. Additionally, it stipulates worldwide protocols for the evaluation of reports that have been submitted. The data obtained by the ETF will be incorporated into the global stocktake, which will evaluate how far humanity has come in achieving long-term climate goals. This will result in suggestions for nations to make more ambitious goals for the following round.

The Paris Agreement is exclusively helping the world become a better place. This agreement gives us a degree of seriousness about climate change and hence countries and governments along with businesses have started taking serious measures to combat climate change in a more structured manner. The readers can dig deep into this topic if interested on the official UN websites.

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