In doing so, they have significantly advanced efforts to uphold our Charter mandate to “save succeeding generations”. It is a health insurance policy for the planet.
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After decades of contentious and often acrimonious negotiations, the nations of the world have come together with an agreement that places our civilization on a path toward avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
Obama has made combating global climate change a top priority of his presidency but has encountered stiff resistance to his proposals from Republicans in Congress.
The victory in Paris caps a remarkable year. While fossil fuels production continues to get incentivized and subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars per year, the rich developed world, responsible for 75 percent of historic emissions, can barely muster a commitment to $100 billion annually (let alone the actual cash), in climate finance to help developing countries transition from fossil fuels.
In the run-up to Paris, newspapers around the world ran stories asking why the United Kingdom seems to be moving backwards on climate change. Obama is counting on the global climate accord to be the exception that allows him to leave a lasting imprint on the planet, even as his opponents are working to whittle the deal away.
Nevertheless, experts agree, the deal in itself will not deliver a safe world. Nations might not live up to their pledges, including the United States under the next president.
What was once unthinkable is now unstoppable. “This is clearly not the case, but thanks to the important protection now secured we can press for any new measures to be firmly based on science, and capable of being implemented without threatening farm output”, he said. Markets now have the clear signal they need to scale up investments that will generate low-emissions, climate-resilient development. I had the chance to speak with one of the negotiators for small island nations who were among those pushing hardest for a robust deal given that their have the most to lose with rising sea levels from global warming. While far from ideal, this agreement strikes a remarkably delicate balance between the collective ambition of global efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions, differentiation between developed and developing countries, and mobilisation of the financial resources needed for support – a balance few thought possible even a week ago.
Currently, these national targets have already significantly bent the emissions curve downwards.
The 195 countries who signed up to the Agreement are committed to reporting every five years on how successful they have been on achieving the targets on the reduction of carbon emissions.
But the things that made the Paris agreement so broadly acceptable to so many countries – its voluntary nature, its lack of enforcement tools, and the many “requests” and “urges” throughout the 31-page text – are the same things that threaten its effectiveness.
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The agreement addresses loss and damage as an issue separate from adaptation, making permanent the Warsaw International Mechanism established at COP19 to formally address loss and damage. It is a claim disputed by many other countries that have chose to break with their traditional reliance on coal and oil because they are convinced they will only be able to push back their emissions in a substantial and sustainable way by switching to renewable energy sources like wind and sun.
