Paris Climate Agreement

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change is a legally binding international agreement on the subject of climate change. It was accepted by 196 parties at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21) in Paris on December 12, 2015, and went into effect on November 4, 2016.

The key aspect of the Paris agreement is to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Governments expect global greenhouse gas emissions to decrease as early as feasibly possible to reach this goal, resulting in a climate-neutral world by mid-century. The Paris Accord is a milestone point in the current climate change process because it is the first legally binding pact that brings all nations together in a particular cause to tackle climate change and prepare for its consequences.

Before discussing why the Paris climate agreement is important, let’s talk about its functioning.

How does it work?

The Paris Agreement is structured on a five-year cycle in which countries take more ambitious climate actions each year. Every five years, each country is obliged to disclose a notifications climate action plan, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC.

In their NDCs, countries outline the steps they will take to reach the Paris Agreement’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In their NDCs, countries also outline the activities they plan to take to build resilience and adapt to the effects of rising temperatures.

The Paris Agreement urges countries to develop and submit long-term strategies to frame their efforts toward the long-term goal better.

The intelligence information for putting the Paris Agreement into practice was negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018, in what is known as the Paris Rulebook, and was to be finalised at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021.

Why do we need the Paris Climate Agreement?

Individual action (while still necessary) is not enough to mitigate the effects of climate change at this time. To adapt and increase resilience, several essential policy initiatives must be altered on a worldwide basis. Among these initiatives are:

• Investing in vulnerable communities in the Global South to develop specialised drought and flooding adaptation plans.
• Enabling community members to participate in the development of these plans and decisions by incorporating their indigenous and traditional knowledge.
• Providing additional research, new technology, and agricultural and meteorological data to these communities.
• Increasing catastrophe risk reduction and disaster preventive investments.
• Investing in resilience-building to avoid disputes over natural resources such as water and land in vulnerable environments.
• Significantly altering production and consumption patterns. Promoting sustainable production methods, healthy food consumption, and a decrease in food loss and waste.

How many countries are part of the Paris Agreement?

Coming to the question of how many countries signed the Paris climate agreement, the answer is 197 countries – nearly every country on the planet – have ratified the Paris Agreement (since 2015), with Syria being the most recent signatory. 190 of them have given their formal consent to their support. Iran, Turkey, and Iraq are the biggest emitting countries that have yet to sign the accord formally.

How are countries supporting one another?

The Paris Agreement establishes a framework for providing financial, technical, and capacity-building assistance to developing countries.

Finance

From the first moment, the Paris Agreement says that richer countries should take the initiative to give financial help to less disadvantaged countries while also encouraging other Parties to go all the way. Climate financing is required for mitigation since large-scale investments are required to reduce emissions significantly. Climate financing is especially important for adaptation, as huge sums of money are needed to adapt to the harmful effects of climate change and mitigate their repercussions.

Technology

The key aspect of the Paris agreement outlines the goal of fully implementing technological development and transfer to improve climate change resilience while also lowering GHG emissions. It establishes a technological basis for the Technology Mechanism’s effective operation. The mechanism is increasing technology development and transfers through its policy and implementation arms.

Capacity-Building

Many of the problems caused by climate change are beyond the reach of many developing countries. As a consequence, the Paris Agreement places a particular emphasis on poor countries’ climate-related capacity-building activities and encourages the wealthier countries to enhance their support.

Conclusion

Regardless of the fact that massive improvements in climate change action are required to reach the Paris Agreement’s goals, low-carbon solutions and new markets have already emerged in the years after it went into effect. A growing number of employers, regions, cities and corporations are setting carbon neutrality goals. Zero-carbon solutions are becoming more attractive in a range of economic sectors that account for 25% of total emissions. This key aspect of the Paris agreement is especially obvious in the electricity and transportation sectors, and it has opened up a slew of new business opportunities for those who get in early.