In 2015, the Paris Agreement against climate change was concluded in the French capital. This Monday, countries are meeting in Azerbaijan to continue developing this global tool that attempts to mitigate the climate crisis and its impacts.
The agreement is a legally binding international treaty by which the signatory countries undertake to make the necessary efforts to prevent the global temperature of the planet at the end of the 21st century from increasing by more than 2ºC compared to what it it was before the industrial era and “preferably” that this limit be 1.5ºC. For this pre-industrial era, the year 1850 is taken as an approximate reference.
This is, as the text explains, a long-term objective. Because reducing greenhouse gas emissions implies a gigantic change in the planet’s production and consumption model, until now based on the combustion of fossil fuels (the source of these emissions). “Implementation of the agreement requires economic and social transformation based on the best available scientific data,” describes the UN itself.
Also because climate inertia is measured in decades: the active lifespan of gases like CO2 in the atmosphere is so long that, even if emissions were completely reduced now, its effect would last for many years, as ‘the World Meteorological Organization recently explained. its analysis of the quantity of CO2 currently accumulated in the atmosphere.
The agreement provides that rich countries will financially assist developing countries to comply with the agreement.
The most innovative thing about this agreement is that the countries adhering to it undertake to do everything in their power to achieve this goal and it is accepted that the origin of global warming causing climate change is greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. .
COP29 and horizon 2050
They also commit to ensuring that global gas emissions peak as soon as possible so that they can start to decline from then on. The agreement recognizes that poor countries will have more time to reach their peak. The idea is that from 2050 onwards, the amount of gas that continues to be pumped into the atmosphere and the amount that is absorbed into forests, soils and oceans, are equivalent (a sort of subtraction of zero) to achieve what he calls: “climate neutrality”.
This commitment, as required by the agreement, must be reflected in each country’s National Climate Plans (NDC) in which they must detail, in broad terms, to what extent they will reduce their emissions and how. These plans are renewed every five years. The next round of NDC plans is to be developed in 2025 and must be “more ambitious” than previous ones, as required by the treaty.
The agreement provides that rich countries will financially assist developing countries to comply with the agreement. That they will invest money to reduce their emissions, protect forests that absorb CO2 or implement clean energies.
Next year, the COP should put new national climate plans on the table
Thanks to this model treaty, 195 of the 198 countries that make up the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have ratified this agreement, which entered into force one year after its conclusion; in 2016. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, was concluded in 1997 and did not come into force until 2005. The United States did not ratify it and Canada abandoned it.
The progress of the agreement is reviewed annually at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention. Holidays In English. or COP). This year, it is being celebrated in Baku (Azerbaijan) as part of what is known as COP29.
Each COP, including this one, has an agenda to develop and agree on the tasks involved in implementing the agreement. For example, this year, in theory, it is time to review the amount of money that rich countries must provide each year to help developing countries. Next year, the COP should put new national climate plans on the table.
