What Is The Paris Agreement On Climate Change

Leap to Section

What Is the Paris Agreement?
Paris Understanding Summary
Why Is the Paris Understanding Of import?
What Are the Paris Agreement'south Costs?
International Agreements on Climate Change
Beyond Paris

"A globe that is safer and more secure, more prosperous, and more free." In December 2015, that was the world and then-president Barack Obama envisioned we would leave today's children when he announced that the United States, forth with nearly 200 other countries, had committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, an aggressive global activity programme to fight climate modify.

Just less than two years later, then-president Donald Trump put that future in jeopardy by announcing his plan to withdraw the U.s. from the accord—a step that became official on November iv, 2020—equally part of a larger effort to dismantle decades of U.S. environmental policy. Fortunately, American voters likewise got their say in Nov 2020, ousting Trump and sending Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.

Post-obit President Biden'due south day one executive order, the The states officially rejoined the landmark Paris Agreement on February 19, 2021, positioning the country to once again be office of the global climate solution. Meanwhile, city, state, business, and civic leaders beyond the country and around the world have been ramping up efforts to drive the clean energy advances needed to come across the goals of the agreement and put the brakes on dangerous climate change.

Here'due south a look at what the Paris Understanding does, how information technology works, and why it's and so disquisitional to our future.

Protesters gather well-nigh the Eiffel Belfry in Paris, France during the 2015 UN Climate Conference.

Clement Martin/Sipa U.s.a. via Associated Press

What Is the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement is a landmark international accord that was adopted past nigh every nation in 2015 to address climate alter and its negative impacts. The understanding aims to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in an endeavor to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius in a higher place preindustrial levels, while pursuing the means to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. The understanding includes commitments from all major emitting countries to cut their climate pollution and to strengthen those commitments over time. The pact provides a pathway for developed nations to assist developing nations in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, and information technology creates a framework for the transparent monitoring, reporting, and ratcheting upwards of countries' individual and collective climate goals.

International leaders stand together at the gathering of COP21 in 2015.

Presidencia de la Republica Mexicana via Flickr

History of the Paris Agreement

Hammered out over two weeks in Paris during the United nations Framework Convention on Climatic change'southward (UNFCCC) 21st Briefing of the Parties (COP 21) and adopted on December 12, 2015, the Paris Agreement marked a historic turning point for global climate activity, equally world leaders came to a consensus on an accord comprised of commitments by 195 nations to combat climate alter and suit to its impacts.

President Obama was able to formally enter the United States into the agreement under international law through executive authorization, since it imposed no new legal obligations on the land. The United states of america has a number of tools already on the books, under laws already passed by Congress, to cut carbon pollution. The state formally joined the agreement in September 2016 after submitting its proposal for participation. The Paris Agreement could not take effect until at least 55 nations representing at least 55 per centum of global emissions had formally joined. This happened on October 5, 2016, and the understanding went into strength 30 days after on November 4, 2016.

How Many Countries Are in the Paris Agreement?

Since 2015, 197 countries—nearly every nation on earth, with the last signatory beingness state of war-torn Syria—have endorsed the Paris Understanding. Of those, 190 have solidified their support with formal approving. The major emitting countries that have yet to formally join the understanding are Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.

President Donald Trump announces that the U.S. volition withdraw from the Paris Agreement in the White House Rose Garden.

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

The Paris Agreement and Trump

Following through on a campaign promise, Trump—a climate denier who has claimed climate change is a "hoax"—announced in June 2017 his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement and officially pulled the nation out on November 4, 2020—the earliest possible appointment under the agreement and a twenty-four hour period subsequently the presidential election. Thankfully, even a formal withdrawal can exist reversed since a future president can rejoin.

Despite Trump'due south annunciation in 2017, U.S. envoys continued to participate—as mandated—in U.N. climate negotiations to solidify details of the agreement. Meanwhile, thousands of leaders nationwide stepped in to fill the void created by the lack of federal climate leadership, reflecting the volition of the vast majority of Americans who support the Paris Agreement. Amid city and land officials, business leaders, universities, and private citizens, there has been a groundswell of participation in initiatives such as America's Pledge, the United States Climate Brotherhood, Nosotros Are Still In, and the American Cities Climate Challenge. The complementary and sometimes overlapping movements aim to deepen and accelerate efforts to tackle climatic change at the local, regional, and national levels.

The Paris Agreement and Biden

On his get-go twenty-four hour period in office, President Biden sent a letter to the Un, formally signaling that the United states would rejoin the Paris Understanding. Thirty days subsequently (as is required), on February xix, 2021, the nation was re-entered.

This new era of U.S. climate leadership represents our final, best chance to class-correct in the global race to tackle climate change. In fact, the Biden'southward climate programme is the most comprehensive ever undertaken past a U.S. president—and he intends to rally international leaders to cut emissions even more than aggressively than under the goals of the Paris Agreement. Equally Biden and Vice President Harris fight to pull the nation out of the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, they can do then in ways that support climate justice and a clean energy economic system.

Paris Agreement Summary

The 32-page document establishes a framework for global climate activity, including the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, the transparent reporting and strengthening of climate goals, and back up for developing nations. Here's what it aims to practice:

The Sinclair Oil Refinery in Sinclair, Wyoming

Nick Cote for NRDC

Limit global temperature rise by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In an effort to "significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change," the accord calls for limiting the global average temperature ascension in this century to well below ii degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.v degrees. Information technology also asks countries to piece of work to accomplish a leveling off of global greenhouse gas emissions as before long equally possible and to become greenhouse gas emissions neutral in the second half of this century. In 2018, the IPCC'south Special Report: Global Warming at one.5 Degrees Celsius concluded the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsuis could hateful substantially more poverty, extreme heat, sea level ascension, habitat loss, and drought.

To accomplish the Paris Understanding's original objectives, 186 countries—responsible for more than 90 percent of global emissions—submitted carbon reduction targets, known as "intended nationally determined contributions" (INDCs), prior to the Paris conference. These targets outlined each land'south commitments for curbing emissions (including through the preservation of carbon sinks) through 2025 or 2030, including economic system-wide carbon-cutting goals.

INDCs turn into NDCs—nationally determined contributions—once a country formally joins the agreement. In that location are no specific requirements most how or how much countries should cut emissions, simply there have been political expectations about the type and stringency of targets by diverse countries based on the latest science. Equally a result, national plans vary greatly in telescopic and appetite, largely reflecting each country'due south capabilities, its level of evolution, and its contribution to emissions over time. Mainland china, for example, committed to leveling off its carbon emissions no later than 2030. India set its sights on cutting emissions intensity by 33 to 35 per centum beneath 2005 levels and generating 40 percent of its electricity from non–fossil fuel sources by 2030.

The United States—the world's largest historical emitter and the second-biggest current emitter after China—had committed to cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels past 2025. U.S. initiatives to reach the target include the Make clean Ability Plan (a state-past-country program to cut carbon pollution from the power sector) and the tightening of automotive fuel economy standards to reduce transportation emissions—both policies the Trump administration fought hard to roll dorsum and which the Biden/Harris administration has committed to strengthening.

Smog covers the city of Taiwan.

CSL media Productions via Flickr

Provide a framework for transparency, accountability, and the achievement of more ambitious targets.

The Paris Agreement includes a series of mandatory measures for the monitoring, verification, and public reporting of progress toward a country's emissions-reduction targets. The enhanced transparency rules utilize mutual frameworks for all countries, with accommodations and back up provided for nations that currently lack the chapters to strengthen their systems.

Amid other requirements, countries must report their greenhouse gas inventories and progress relative to their targets, allowing exterior experts to evaluate their success. Countries are likewise expected to revisit their pledges and put forrad progressively stronger targets every five years, with the goal of further driving downwardly emissions. Nations must participate in a "global stocktake" to measure out collective efforts toward meeting the Paris Agreement's long-term goals besides. Meanwhile, developed countries also have to judge how much financial assistance they'll classify to developing nations to help them reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate alter.

These transparency and accountability provisions are like to those in the frameworks of other international agreements. While the system doesn't include financial penalties, the requirements are aimed at making the progress of individual nations easy to runway and fostering a sense of global peer pressure, discouraging any dragging of feet among countries that may consider doing then.

Mobilize support for climatic change mitigation and adaptation in developing nations.

Recognizing that many developing countries and small island nations that accept contributed the least to climate modify could suffer the most from its consequences, the Paris Agreement includes a plan for developed countries—and others "in a position to practice and then"—to continue to provide financial resources to help developing countries mitigate and increment resilience to climate alter. For case, Bharat'southward pledge includes the need to eradicate poverty in parallel with decreasing emissions and increasing renewable energy, such as addressing energy poverty and access in remote villages that rely on diesel generators. With technological and financial help from wealthier countries, important equity-focused goals such as these can exist within achieve. The Paris Understanding builds on the financial commitments of the 2009 Copenhagen Accordance, which aimed to scale up public and private climate finance for developing nations to $100 billion a year past 2020. The Copenhagen pact also created the Dark-green Climate Fund to help mobilize transformational private finance using targeted public dollars. The Paris Agreement established the expectation that the world would prepare a higher almanac goal by 2025 to build on the $100 billion target for 2020 and would put mechanisms in identify to achieve that scaling up. Unfortunately, collective contributions go along to fall short, reaching approximately $79 billion in 2019.

While developed nations are not legally leap to contribute a specific amount to the mitigation and adaptation efforts of developing countries, they are encouraged to provide financial support and are required to study on the financing they supply or volition mobilize.

Ice melt in Greenland

Christopher Michel via Flickr

Why Is the Paris Agreement Of import?

Rarely is there consensus among virtually all nations on a unmarried topic. But with the Paris Agreement, leaders from effectually the world collectively agreed that climate change is driven past human being behavior, that it's a threat to the environs and all of humanity, and that global activity is needed to end it. It also created a clear framework for all countries to make emissions reduction commitments and strengthen those actions over time. Here are some key reasons why the agreement is so of import:

Human being-generated emissions cause global warming.

Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are gases that collect in the atmosphere and prevent oestrus from radiating from earth'southward surface into space, creating what'due south known as the greenhouse effect. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Modify (IPCC), the leading international scientific trunk studying the subject, the concentration of these heat-trapping gases has increased substantially since preindustrial times to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. Carbon dioxide (the main contributor to climatic change) is up past 40 pct, nitrous oxide past 20 percent, and methane by a whopping 150 percent since 1750—mainly from the burning of muddy fossil fuels. The IPCC says it's "extremely likely" that these emissions are mostly to blame for the rise in global temperatures since the 1950s. Meanwhile, deforestation and woods degradation have contributed significantly to global carbon emissions likewise.

Global warming threatens climate systems.

Hotter temperatures—both on land and at sea—modify global conditions patterns and alter how and where precipitation falls. Those shifting patterns exacerbate dangerous and mortiferous drought, estrus waves, floods, wildfires, and storms, including hurricanes. They besides melt ice caps, glaciers, and layers of permafrost, which can lead to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. Warmer temperatures impact whole ecosystems as well, throwing migration patterns and life cycles out of whack. For case, an early bound tin can induce copse and plants to flower before bees and other pollinators have emerged. While global warming may equate to longer growing seasons and higher nutrient product in some regions, areas already coping with water scarcity are expected to become drier, creating the potential for drought, failed crops, or wildfires.

Climate modify endangers man wellness.

As climate change fuels temperature increases and extreme weather events, it jeopardizes our air, water, and nutrient; spreads disease; and imperils our homes and safe. We are confronting a growing public health crisis.

Extreme rut contributes direct to cardiovascular deaths and respiratory disease. In the Indian metropolis of Ahmedabad, for example, more than than i,300 backlog deaths were recorded during a heat wave in May 2010. High temperatures also reduce air quality by creating more than smog, pollen, and other air-borne allergens—all of which tin trigger asthma, which afflicts 235 million people around the world. Farthermost heat tin can also exacerbate drought, leading to malnutrition and famine.
Changing weather patterns tin can touch on sources of fresh h2o and food. While drought creates h2o scarcity, floods can contaminate drinking water supplies, increasing the risk of water-borne diseases and illnesses spread past disease-carrying insects, such as mosquitoes. Unpredictable conditions patterns and water supplies tin also wreak havoc on agriculture and food supplies, particularly in regions of the world that are less climate-resilient and where staple food crops are disquisitional for survival.
Extreme weather and rising seas can destroy homes, public infrastructure, and entire ways of life—forcing people to motion or migrate, displacing whole populations, and increasing the threat of ceremonious unrest. Indeed, the Earth Economical Forum ranks extreme weather, natural disasters, and our collective failure to mitigate and conform to climate change as amongst the greatest threats facing humanity in the coming decade. We're already experiencing some of those dangers. In the United States, 6 contempo natural disasters equated to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and ER and doctor visits, as well equally more than one,600 premature deaths. In 2017 alone, 16 farthermost weather–related disasters price the state a record-breaking $306 billion in amercement.

The countries hardest hitting by the impact of climatic change volition be low-lying nations uniquely vulnerable to ocean level rising and developing countries that lack the resources to accommodate to temperature and precipitation changes. Just wealthy nations such equally the United states are increasingly vulnerable as well. Indeed, many millions of Americans—particularly children, the elderly, and the impoverished—are already suffering climate change'southward wrath. Many frontline communities are majority people of color. Around the earth, those most impacted past climatic change are those who contribute least to emissions.

Flooding overtakes a farm in Bangladesh.

Amir Jina via Flickr

Global warming can be mitigated only with global action.

The IPCC notes that climate change will exist limited only past "substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions." While 1 can fence the merits of using a single global temperature threshold to correspond unsafe climate change, the general scientific view today—represented in the IPCC'due south Special Written report: Global Warming at 1.5 Degrees Celsius—is that any rising in global temperatures of more than 1.v degrees Celsius would be an unacceptably high gamble, potentially resulting in major extinctions, more severe droughts and hurricanes, a watery Chill, and an increased toll on human health and well-being. Furthermore, equally the IPCC has noted, while it remains uncertain precisely how much global warming will "trigger abrupt and irreversible changes" in the globe's systems, the risk of crossing the threshold only increases equally temperatures rise.

To avert major changes to life equally we know it, global activeness must exist taken. At the Paris climate conference, all countries committed to a target of keeping the temperature change to well below two degrees and to make efforts to prevent a modify greater than i.five degrees. Unfortunately, the emissions gap—the emissions level with existing commitments compared to a safer trajectory—is nonetheless dangerously large every bit of 2020. Every tenth of a degree matters, and nosotros cannot preclude this unless we human activity immediately to cutting emissions securely.

The McFadden Ridge Wind Energy Project in Carbon Canton, Wyoming

Nick Cote for NRDC

What Are the Paris Agreement's Costs?

There'south a lot of misinformation out there about the Paris Agreement, including the thought that it will injure the U.Southward. economy. That was among a number of unfounded claimsformer president Trump repeated, arguing that the accord would cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion by 2040 and $2.7 one thousand thousand jobs by 2025, making us less competitive against China and India. But equally fact checkers noted, these statistics originated from a debunked March 2017 study that exaggerated the future costs of emissions reductions, underestimated advances in free energy efficiency and clean free energy technologies, and outright ignored the huge health and economic costs of climatic change itself. Climatic change is already costing public health. Enquiry from NRDC scientists shows how inaction on climatic change is responsible for many billions in health costs each twelvemonth in just the United States—as communities effectually the globe experience greater displacement, illness, famine, water shortages, civil strife, and death.

Research makes articulate that the price of climate inaction far outweighs the cost of reducing carbon pollution. Ane 2018 study suggests that if the United States failed to see its Paris climate goals, it could price the economic system equally much as $6 trillion in the coming decades. A worldwide failure to meet the NDCs currently laid out in the agreement could reduce global Gdp more than 25 percent by century's end. Meanwhile, some other written report estimates that meeting—or even exceeding—the Paris goals via infrastructure investments in both make clean energy and free energy efficiency could have major global rewards—to the melody of some $19 trillion.

In terms of employment, the make clean free energy sector employed more three one thousand thousand Americans earlier the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—about 14 times the number of coal, gas, oil, and other fossil fuel industry workers—and has the potential to employ many more with further investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric grid modernization to replace the crumbling coal-powered infrastructure. Meanwhile, coal jobs aren't so much beingness transferred "out of America" as they are falling victim to market forces as renewable and natural gas prices decline. But supporting policies that promote an equitable transition—with community-led determination-making, a focus on equity, and retraining back up—is an important means to helping communities leave the muddied energy economic system backside them.

Finally, rather than giving China and Bharat a pass to pollute, every bit Trump claimed, the pact represents the first time those ii major developing economies have agreed to concrete and time-bound climate commitments. Both countries, which are already poised to atomic number 82 the world in renewable energy, have fabricated significant progress to meet their Paris goals.

President George H. Due west. Bush-league signs the Earth Pledge at the 1992 Globe Summit in Rio De Janeiro.

K. Frustino/Associated Press

International Agreements on Climate change

The Paris Agreement is the culmination of decades of international efforts to combat climatic change. Here is a cursory history.

Un Framework Convention on Climate Alter

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush-league joined 107 other heads of land at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil to adopt a series of environmental agreements, including the UNFCCC framework that remains in effect today. The international treaty aimed to prevent dangerous human interference with world's climate systems over the long term. The pact set no limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contained no enforcement mechanisms, but instead established a framework for international negotiations of future agreements, or protocols, to set binding emissions targets. Participating countries meet annually at a Conference of the Parties (COP) to appraise their progress and go on talks on how to best tackle climate modify.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol, a landmark ecology treaty that was adopted in 1997 at the COP iii in Nihon, represents the first fourth dimension nations agreed to legally mandated, country-specific emissions reduction targets. The protocol, which didn't become into effect until 2005, set binding emissions reduction targets for adult countries but, on the premise that they were responsible for most of the world'southward loftier levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The Usa initially signed the agreement but never ratified it; President George W. Bush argued that the deal would hurt the U.S. economy since developing nations such as Prc and India were not included. Without the participation of those three countries, the treaty'southward effectiveness proved limited, with its targets covering only a small fraction of total global emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol'southward initial delivery period extended through 2012. That yr, at the COP 18 in Doha, Qatar, delegates agreed to extend the accordance until 2020 (without some developed nations, which had dropped out). They also reaffirmed their 2011 pledge from the COP 17 in Durban, S Africa, to create a new, comprehensive climate treaty by 2015 that would crave all big emitters non included in the Kyoto Protocol—such as China, India, and the Usa—to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The new treaty—what would become the Paris Agreement—was to fully supersede the Kyoto Protocol by 2020. However, the Paris accord went into issue earlier than expected, in November 2016.

Kyoto Protocol versus the Paris Agreement

While the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement both set out to accost climate change, there are some central differences between them.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which established top-down legally binding emissions reduction targets (as well as penalties for noncompliance) for developed nations only, the Paris Agreement requires that all countries—rich, poor, developed, and developing—practise their part and slash greenhouse gas emissions. To that end, greater flexibility and national ownership is built into the Paris Understanding: No language is included about the commitments countries should brand; nations tin can set their own emissions targets (NDCs) consistent with their level of development and technological advancement.

While the Paris Agreement doesn't have harsh penalties for countries non meeting their targets, it does take a robust organisation of monitoring, reporting, and reassessing individual and collective country targets over time in guild to movement the world closer to the broader objectives of the deal. And the agreement sets along a requirement for countries to announce their next round of targets every v years—unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which aimed for that objective but didn't include a specific requirement to achieve it.

The aftermath of a wildfire near Santiam Laissez passer in Oregon

Sheila Sund via Flickr

Beyond Paris

While the Paris Understanding ultimately aims to cap global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius in this century, many studies evaluating the national pledges countries fabricated in Paris prove that the cumulative effect of those emissions reductions won't be large plenty to keep temperatures under that limit. Indeed, the targets that countries laid out are expected to limit future temperature rise to approximately 2.9 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, despite temporary emissions drops related to changes in production and travel associated with the COVID-xix pandemic, electric current evaluations of how countries are performing in the context of their Paris climate goals indicate some nations are already falling short of their commitments.

Nonetheless, it's of import to recollect the Paris Agreement isn't static. Instead, it'south designed to boost countries' national efforts over time—pregnant that current commitments represent the floor, not the ceiling, of climate change ambition. The heavy lifting—reining in emissions even further by 2030 and 2050—still needs to exist done, and the accord provides the tools and pressure to make that happen.

As the Paris Agreement matures, nations including the United States must firmly commit to phasing out fossil fuel investment (locally and abroad) and investing in nature-based solutions. Often, the communities who contribute least to global emissions are the ones already showing wealthier nations the style, committing to rapid emissions reductions, renewable energy expansion, protecting their forests, and putting economies on low-carbon pathways. Nations must uplift these communities as well as those who are faced with the brunt of climate impacts. This includes formally protecting Ethnic cognition and rights, which are critical to fighting the climate crisis. Indigenous peoples—comprising 5 percent of the global population—protect 80 percent of the planet's biodiversity. Fifty-fifty without stronger recognition within the Paris Understanding, Indigenous and frontline communities are building a global movement and successfully fighting back against extractive, climate-dissentious industries, including fossil-fuel pipelines, logging, dams, and mining.

Reflecting the collective belief of most every nation on earth that climate change is humanity's race to win, the Paris Agreement exposes America's climate skeptics as global outliers. In fact, the mobilization of support for climate activity across the land and effectually the world provides hope that the Paris Agreement marked a turning point in the global race confronting climate change. We can all contribute to the cause past seeking opportunities to slash global warming contributions—at the individual, local, and national levels—but we empathise better than always that individual action is not enough. There is a lot of damage from the Trump administration that President Biden will need to undo—and quickly. But the effort will be well worth the reward of a safer, cleaner globe for future generations.

The adjacent Conference of the Parties is currently scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow. The aims of COP 26 will exist to assess the progress fabricated nether the Paris Understanding and to encourage countries to enhance their original NDCs into greater alignment with current climate science. While COP 26 was postponed due to COVID-19, the delay gives countries time to develop more aggressive targets and advance low-carbon actions to ensure a green and resilient recovery from COVID-19.

This story was originally published on Dec 12, 2018 and has been updated with new information and links.

NRDC.org stories are available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these weather condition: The author(due south) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as time and identify elements, style, and grammar); you can't resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you tin can't republish our textile wholesale or automatically—you lot demand to select stories individually; yous can't republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; y'all should drib us a note to let us know when you've used one of our stories.