The Paris Agreement, 1 accepted in the end by all 196 nations represented, was rightly regarded by most observers as a major triumph for the negotiators, particularly the French hosts after the devastating terrorist attacks only two weeks before. Perhaps the most important thing was the global consensus on the reality of climate change and the urgent need to address it. There was ultimately no dissent from the agreed objective of limiting global average temperature to ‘well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels’ and ‘to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C’ 2 ; or the aim to reach a balance between emissions and removals by the second half of the century. 3 In other words, no net increase in greenhouse gases after 2050.
A key to the success to the negotiations was the decision not to seek to impose absolute limits from above, which arguably had led to the relative failure in Copenhagen in 2009. 4 The planned Paris agreement started from a different approach—universal in application, and bottom-up rather than top-down. It was based on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), rather than imposed targets. This is reflected in the principal legal obligations in the Paris Agreement which, within the agreed objectives, places the emphasis on NDCs and domestic measures to achieve the agreed overall objectives. 5 There is also an obligation to update the NDCs every five years, informed by a periodic ‘global stocktake’ by the Conference to assess ‘collective progress’ towards the objectives of the agreement. 6 The Agreement also reaffirms the obligations of developed countries under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 7 to support the efforts of developing countries, and commits them to provide financial support of at least $100 billion a year. 8