The Paris Agreement- background: Laurence Chapman

In December 2015, one-hundred and ninety-five agreed on and “adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal” (Paris Agreement, EU website, 2015) at the Paris Climate Change Conference, ‘COP21’. The idea was to set out a plan to ensure that climate change did not increase by more than two degrees centigrade.

All countries agreed to meet every five years to keep on top of progress and to update the action plan. There were also initiatives to provide EU funding within Europe and collectively put aside one-hundred billion USD to aid developing countries implement the action plans.

So far, there has been good progress in terms of the signings such as the EU ratifying the agreement on the 5th October 2016.

However, the Paris Agreement subsequently suffered a significant set-back- the withdrawal of the United States of America by the Trump Administration on 1st June 2017. This was because President Trump believed that "the Paris accord will undermine (the U.S.) economy," and "puts (the U.S.) at a permanent disadvantage.” (President Trump Speech 1/06/2017).

However, “in accordance with Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the earliest possible effective withdrawal date by the United States cannot be before November 4, 2020, four years after the Agreement came into effect in the United States and one day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election" (‘Revolvy’, 2017 ). Therefore, the US will still have to adhere to the agreement, meaning that the Paris Agreement remains strong for now and every other major country is still included. Moreover, “Donald Trump says US could re-enter Paris climate deal” (The Guardian, 29/01/2018). President Trump said that his country could join the international accord if it had a “completely different deal” but called the existing agreement a “terrible deal”.

This possibility of the USA re-entering the Paris Agreement could strengthen the results as the USA is such a major and influential nation on the world stage. However, it would require a large change which would only occur in when the next Paris Climate Conference is held.