The Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement (French: Accord de Paris) is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016. The agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015. As of July 2021, 191 members of the UNFCCC are parties to the agreement. Of the six UNFCCC member states which have not ratified the agreement, the only major emitters are Iran, Turkey, and Iraq (though the president has approved that country's accession). The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2020, but rejoined in 2021. The Paris Agreement was opened for signature on 22 April 2016 (Earth Day) at a ceremony in New York. After the European Union ratified the agreement in October 2016, there were enough countries that had ratified the agreement that produce enough of the world's greenhouse gases for the agreement to enter into force on 4 November 2016. The Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goal is to keep the rise in global average temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), recognizing that this would substantially reduce the impacts of climate change. This should be done by reducing emissions as soon as possible and achieving a net-zero emissions in the second half of the 21st century. It also aims to increase the ability of parties to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and mobilise sufficient finance. Under the Agreement, each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on its contributions. No mechanism forces a country to set specific emissions targets, but each target should go beyond previously set targets. In contrast to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the distinction between developed and developing countries is blurred, so that the latter also have to submit plans for emission reductions. The Agreement was lauded by world leaders, but criticised as insufficiently binding by some environmentalists and analysts. There is debate about the effectiveness of the Agreement. While current pledges under the Paris Agreement are insufficient for reaching the set temperature goals, there is a mechanism of increased ambition. The Paris Agreement has been successfully used in climate litigation forcing countries and an oil company to strengthen climate action