Paris Agreement 2- success or not? - Laurence Chapman

Has the Paris Agreement been successful as a key model of whether international environmental agreements are effective in helping the law to adapt sufficiently to growing sustainability issues across the globe?

The ‘Post-Kyoto’ United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change goal to “devise a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with some legal elements, covering both developed and developing countries” (Climatica, 24th August 2017, was in fact “achieved in December 2015, when 195 countries adopted the Paris Agreement, an agreement praised as ‘historic’, ‘ambitious’ and the ‘greatest diplomatic success’. On the surface, it seems that the Paris Agreement was a successful diplomatic continuation from the Kyoto Protocol. However, meeting the 2 degrees C target is “unlikely”, there is no proper plan nor guidance and “withdrawal without sanctions” is possible. It seems then that the Paris Agreement is not likely to be a great success over the next few decades as the figures are not in its favour and withdrawal such as the USA is easily possible and could happen in more cases. However, there has not been enough time to properly assess how it is doing on a global scale and whether it is reducing emissions directly.

Another issue with the Paris Agreement is that it is only partially “legally binding”. The agreement itself is legally binding however, “the emission reduction targets are not”. This is a major issue with the Paris Agreement because the main focus was to reduce global emissions by a certain figure, two degrees centigrade. If these targets are not legally binding then countries can simply stay signed up to look favourably politically and internationally without truly meeting any targets. This makes the whole agreement seem rather false and weak. Whilst the targets set by individual nations “need to be “ambitious” and “represent a progression over time” (Paris Agreement quoted in ‘Climatica’) these words could be interpreted very differently by different nations to suit their requirements and views. There is also the added element of language barriers of course.

Soon after the agreement was adopted, top climate experts published an open letter to 'The Independent’ newspaper. In it, they warned that the agreement is “far too weak to prevent harmful impacts". They suggested that it was “insufficient” and not “sufficiently binding”. ‘Climate Action Tracker’ concluded that the pledges from Paris are nowhere near sufficient to ‘limit global warming’ to no more than two degrees centigrade. This significantly reduces the apparent effectiveness of the Paris Agreement because it seems that the targets are too hopeful and not backed up by sufficient planning nor sufficiently binding legislation over the countries signed up as seen with how easy withdrawal is and how countries can set any targets they like.

An article published in ‘Nature, Rogelj et al’ in June 2016 as cited by ‘Climatica’ concluded that “the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) will lead to a median warming of 2.6–3.1 degrees Celsius by 2100". This demonstrates just how far off the targets of the Paris Agreements are and how much more must be done with this agreement and with future ones to ensure they will be more reliable, however, we still have not been able to assess how effective the Paris Agreement is empirically because there simply has not been enough time since it was set in December 2015.

Overall, the Paris Agreement has not been successful as a key model of whether international environmental agreements are effective in helping the law to adapt sufficiently to growing sustainability issues across the globe yet. It seems that the agreement is not well grounded enough and lacks a clear and coherent plan which every country can stick to. It is also too flexible and not fully legally binding as withdrawal is arguably too easy ad countries can set their own targets against a vague description,“ambitious”, which could be interpreted very different by different nations and their respective legislative bodies. A revised Paris Agreement at the next meeting in 2020 which irons out these issues might be very beneficial and more realistic in terms of achieving the targets which should be the same or at least proportional to each individual country. Without meaning to perhaps, President Trump may be correct that the Paris Agreement is in need of revision not just regarding the economic prosperity of the United States.