The Paris Agreement

In one line

Paris keeps the objective and gives up the assigned target, replacing it with a contribution each Party sets for itself and a transparency system that shows whether it is being met.

In exam wording: the Paris Agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and entered into force on 4 November 2016; article 2 sets the aim of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees, of increasing the ability to adapt and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, and of making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

Article 2: the aim

Paragraph 1 states the three aims above, in enhancing the implementation of the Convention including its objective, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.

Paragraph 2 is the differentiation clause: this Agreement will be implemented to reflect equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.

Those last five words are the diplomatic achievement of the Agreement. Differentiation survives, the fixed annexes do not, and a Party's obligations reflect where it is now rather than where it was in 1992.

Article 3: the general obligation

As nationally determined contributions to the global response to climate change, all Parties are to undertake and communicate ambitious efforts as defined in articles 4, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 13, with a view to achieving the purpose of the Agreement; the efforts of all Parties will represent a progression over time, while recognising the need to support developing country Parties for the effective implementation of the Agreement.

Note that the contribution is not only about mitigation. Article 3 names adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building and transparency alongside it.

Article 4: mitigation, and the sentence that matters

Paragraph 1 sets the goal: to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the second half of this century.

Paragraph 2 is the operative obligation. Each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.

Read it clause by clause and the design becomes clear.

• Shall prepare, communicate and maintain. Binding, and precisely enforceable: a contribution is communicated or it is not.
• Successive. There must be a new one each cycle.
• That it intends to achieve. The content is the Party's own.
• Shall pursue domestic mitigation measures. Binding as to conduct.
• With the aim of achieving the objectives. Not an obligation of result.