UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says those 60 countries represent more than 47 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
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Erik Solheim, director of the United Nations environment program said: “If enough countries start implementing the Paris agreement, historians will see this as a watershed moment”. Countries that deposited their instruments of ratification at NY event on Wednesday included Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Dominica, Ghana, Guinea, Honduras, Iceland, Kiribati, Madagascar, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Thailand, Tonga, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, and Vanuatu.
If those nations come through they collectively represent more than 12 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions, which means the pact would be put into force.
Once the 60 percent threshhold is crossed, the very complicated agreement kicks into gear-each individual country will have to contribute financially to keep the global average temperature from rising, to help adapt to changes brought on by global warming, and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions overall.
After Wednesday’s event, according to a United Nations statement, 60 countries representing 48 percent of the global emission have so far joined.
On the other hand, Donald Trump is one of the most prominent opponents to the facts of climate change, threatening to exit the Paris Agreements if he were elected president. But the second threshold requires those signatories to represent 55 percent of global emissions and they fall a little short.
The number is higher than the 55-country threshold needed for the treaty to go into force. This indicator now approximates to 48%, primarily due to the ratification by China and the United States. The EU, however, announced to join the Agreement this year. “I’m confident that by the time I leave office the Paris agreement will have entered into force”, Ban added.
In December, almost 200 countries adopted the historic agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Withdrawing the US from the agreements would be a complete setback to the global efforts against climate change. The conference will open one day before the United States presidential elections. “Early entry into force of the Agreement would have been an important signal and step forward to protect the lives of millions of people around the world”.
“If ever anybody doubted science, all they have to do is watch, feel, sense what is happening in the world today”, he said.
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“The Obama administration clearly would like to see this done before they leave office”, said Alden Meyer, a veteran observer of the United Nations climate talks at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Japan (3.79 percent), Canada (1.95 percent), Australia (1.46 percent) and Indonesia (1.49 percent), for example, are among at least 14 countries not yet onboard that have undertaken to ratify the Paris accord before the end of the year.
