The Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement was mentioned a lot in the news over the past few years. The gist is that it’s an agreement that the majority of countries have signed to limit global warming to below 2°C. But how is this achieved, who signed, and is it feasible?

 

This is an agreement organised by the United Nations that was devised at the end of 2015. It is effectively a pledge to keep average temperature increases at about 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It comprises of three aims:

 

(a) Holding the increase in the 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 above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;

 

(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;

 

(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

 

This agreement replaced the Kyoto Protocol, a UN treaty that was devised in 1997 and went into effect in 2005. 192 countries signed this agreement, with the exceptions being Afghanistan, Sudan, and the USA. The main difference is that the Kyoto Protocol was legally binding, and the Paris Agreement works on more of a political honour system.

 

What are Countries Actually Doing to Lower their Carbon Footprint?

 

There are 196 countries involves with the Paris agreement; let’s look at the top three’s pledges:

 

China (23.75% of GHG) have planned to peak in carbon emissions in 2030 if not earlier, and to increase it’s use of low-carbon energy sources. This still means that in the 15 years following the Paris agreement, their carbon footprint will increase. In fact, it may be decades before it gets back to the yearly carbon output from when they signed the agreement, if ever.

 

The EU (8.97% of GHG), a group of 27 countries in Europe, have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.

 

India (5.73% of GHG) have pledged a 37% reduction in emission intensity, for 40% of their energy to come from renewable sources, and to create a carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes.

 

These are the pledges, but they don’t tell us much about what they’re actually doing.

 

If we take a look further, into the EU for example, there are more concrete plans to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources, make energy more efficient, ban single use plastic, regulate traffic and vehicle use, and improve recycling initiatives. Furthermore, The EU have a goal to become carbon-neutral by 2050, a goal beyond the scope of the Paris Agreement.

 

What countries are doing and how committed they are to climate change is very individual. It heavily depends on the political atmosphere and there are many factors that affect how much of a priority this agreement is, from their economy, to wars, to natural disasters. However, most of the responsibility lies with the top 20 biggest contributors. Half of countries emit less than 0.05% of total GHG emissions. Massive changes to their policies would have massive changed to their economies but very negligible change to the climate.

 

Who Signed it?

 

196 nations have agreed to sign the Paris agreement. 187 have ratified it. This is a huge deal since it’s very rare for so many countries to agree on one thing, especially considering the political divide that climate change is in the middle of.

You might think that’s everyone but there are eight nations that have signed the deal but have not ratified. This means that out of all of the countries that have agreed to sign it, there are several that have not officially signed it. Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Angola, Eritrea, Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen have not been ratified and make up 3.8% of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to the top emitter, China, at 26%.

 

More worryingly, the US (which had been ratified) withdrew from the agreement in November of 2019. The US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases at 13%. This is because the republican party insist that the climate crisis is a hoax perpetrated by China, however a deeper motivation is probably the possible economical effects and the corruption between politicians and their donors, a large portion of whom are invested in fossil fuels.

 

How Are We Looking?

 

One way that this is calculated is called the ‘Carbon Budget’, how much greenhouse gases we are allowed to burn that will still allow us to stay within the 1.5°C limit. It’s difficult to estimate how much we have left as it’s very difficult to compile such large amount of data and account for all the variables. The current estimate is that we have 9% left. This means that from the time we started burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases, we have used up 91% of the carbon that we’re allowed before the temperature increase reaches ±2°C.

 

It’s even more difficult to predict the future. For example, 2008 recession slowed down production enough for some countries to stay within the Kyoto Protocol terms. We are heading for a global recession due to the Corona Virus so production may slow again. This means we might use up our remaining carbon budget slower over the next decade. We also can’t account for natural disasters that might slow or increase the speed of global warming, such as volcanic eruptions which cool the earth by removing heat from its core.

So, can we say that the Paris Agreement is working? It's hard to measure, and it comes down to a lot of big decisions by the biggest contributors. Theres a very high chance that we won't meet the 2°C limit however there are a lot of countries and organisations that are doing a lot of work to fight against the climate crisis.