Paris agreement summary

Incheon, Republic of Korea, October 8 – Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, the IPCC said in a new assessment. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on Monday. The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C was approved by the IPCC on Saturday in Incheon, Republic of Korea. It will be a key scientific input into the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December, when governments review the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change. “With more than 6,000 scientific references cited and the dedicated contribution of thousands of expert and government reviewers worldwide, this important report testifies to the breadth and policy relevance of the IPCC,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. Ninety-one authors and review editors from 40 countries prepared the IPCC report in response to an invitation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) when it adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015. The report’s full name is Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change,...

Listen to this article read aloud by the author What is the Paris Climate Agreement? The Paris Climate Agreement is an international treaty that commits most of the world’s governments to addressing climate change. Forged through decades of negotiations, the Paris Agreement is the world’s first comprehensive climate treaty. Despite its problems, it’s still seen as a major breakthrough in humanity’s effort to tackle the issue. When someone mentions Paris in the context of climate change, this is usually what they’re talking about. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to stop the world’s average temperature rising more than two degrees, or ideally 1.5ºC. Doing this would likely prevent the worst impacts of climate change (although it will still cause serious harm, especially to people who did least to cause this crisis). But at the moment the world isn’t even on track to hit that goal. Almost every government in the world has signed up to the Paris Agreement. The only ones that haven’t joined are Iran, Turkey, Eritrea, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya and Yemen. The US left the agreement under Donald Trump, but rejoined in early 2021 when President Joe Biden took office. Is the Paris Agreement working? Not yet, but it still could. Most experts agree that it’s helped speed up climate action around the world, but not by enough. It’s also a useful framework to help countries work together on climate change. However, it still relies on them taking the problem seriously in the first place....

Updated 2/6/17 after president Trump said he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement and not meet the pledge it had made. See this Updated 1/6/17 to cover all 193 submitted climate pledges. Syria and Nicaragua are the only countries not signed up to the Paris Agreement, with Nicaragua having deemed the deal Countries around the world have been submitting their pledges to the UN, setting out how far they intend to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These promises, known as “intended nationally determined contributions”, or INDCs, will determine the success of the deal that the UN hopes to sign off in Paris in December this year. [Note 1/6/17: When countries formally Pledge Tracker: Tracking country climate pledges. Carbon Brief is summarising the pledges made by each country. We’ll update this post as each INDC comes in. We’ve also published separate, in-depth articles on the pledges made by To find out exactly what an INDC is and why it matters, read our An informal deadline of 1 October marked the cut-off to be included in an INDC summary from the UN. Some 148 parties made the cut. Another 48 countries responsible for 10% of the world’s emissions have yet to submit their INDC. Carbon Brief is maintaining a separate tracker of requests for Infographic: Who has pledged an INDC so far, and what percentage of the world’s emissions are covered. Credit: Rosamund Pearce, Carbon Brief, based on EU data. Only UN parties have been included in the emissions total. Greenland...

Two days prior to the start of The submission means China has now officially confirmed that its commitment to tackle climate change under the terms of the Notably, major targets in the revised 2030 pledge (known as a There was However, various China experts interviewed by Carbon Brief believe that the combination of targets in the documents, if fully implemented, could still lead to a lower peak in emissions being reached earlier than the officially stated goal of “before 2030”. Below, Carbon Brief reviews both documents, their implications for China’s energy sector and emissions, plus examines the challenges the country faces in tackling climate change. What is in China’s new climate pledges? The headline targets in China’s The document – which is titled, “China’s achievements, new goals and new measures for nationally determined contributions” – was published on 28 October 2021, just days before COP26. In terms of quantitative targets for 2030, it pledges to cut CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by more than 65% from 2005 levels, increase the share of non-fossil energy to around 25% and raise forest stock volumes by 6bn cubic metres from 2005 levels, as well as bringing the installed capacity of wind and solar to more than 1,200 gigawatts (GW). The first three quantitative targets are enhancements to goals that were included in China’s In addition to the strengthened quantitative goals, China has now pledged to peak emissions “before 2030”, whereas its first NDC had aimed to...

We are already witnessing the What is Article 6? Public funds won’t be enough to finance developing countries’ NDCs. Most emission reduction activities need to be implemented and financed by the private sector. Suitable finance approaches are therefore required – and this is where Article 6 of the Paris Agreement can help. Article 6 acknowledges that countries can pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions to allow for higher mitigation ambition and to promote sustainable development. Article 6.2 outlines the possibility of cooperative approaches and the transfer of Internationally Transferrable Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) between different actors, including countries and private sector companies, through bilateral agreements. ITMOs use a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) metric for a new set of market provisions or other greenhouse gas mitigation outcomes that are defined under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. The mechanisms set out under Article 6.2 on cooperative approaches also underline that beyond emissions reductions, climate mitigation projects can directly or indirectly yield many development benefits – including job creation, technology transfer to increase access to energy, support to livelihoods and food security, gender empowerment and more. How does it work? Let’s take an example of cooperative approaches that are already put in place by Switzerland, Ghana, and Vanuatu. Ghana presented at a In Ghana, the ...