 The Paris climate treaty: a snapshot Paris (AFP) Dec 2, 2018 - Key facts about the agreement: - The climate club - A total of 196 governments, including the Palestinian Authority, have endorsed the landmark deal and 183 have officially ratified it as of December 1. International agreements can be signed, but only become binding through ratification. The accord -- which becomes operational in 2020 -- entered into force in November 2016 when it crossed the threshold of 55 ratifying parties representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The world's top carbon polluters, in descending order, are China, the United States, the European Union, and India. The biggest polluter not to have ratified the deal is Russia, which ranks 5th. Turkey and Iran have also failed to ratify. - Exit strategy - The agreement allows parties to quit, but notice can be given only three 1years after entry into force. Withdrawal would take effect a year later. In June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would pull out. Under treaty rules, that cannot formally take place until November 4, the day after the next US presidential election. A country can also withdraw from the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under whose authority the deal was negotiated. Withdrawal takes effect a year after notification, which can be given at any time. - The goal - Nations have agreed to hold global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and to strive for a lower limit of 1.5C, if possible. A major report from the UN's science advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concluded in October that the 1.5C cap is technically feasible but would require a rapid and wholesale transformation of the global economy. Even the two-degree ceiling is a huge challenge, according to the IPCC, which calculated that emissions must drop 40-to-70 percent by 2050 (compared to 2010 levels) to hit that target. Signatories have undertaken to ensure that global emissions peak "as soon as possible". They rose in 2017, and are on track to go up again this year. Voluntary national pledges annexed to the treaty would see the planet warm by at least 3C, a recipe for catastrophic floods, heatwaves, drought and storm surges made worse by sea level rise, say scientists. - Tracking progress - Starting in 2020, countries will take stock every five years of their collective progress in curbing global warming, with an eye toward boosting national efforts to cut emissions. Most current pledges extend to 2030, with a few -- including the plan submitted by the United States under Barack Obama -- running to 2025. But faced with the inadequacy of those pledges and dire warnings from climate scientists that emissions must peak and sharply decline as soon as possible, nations are under pressure to enhance their carbon-cutting commitments sooner. - Financing - Rich countries are required to provide funding to help developing nations make the costly shift to clean energy, and to shore up defences against climate impacts. The treaty mandates climate aid of $100 billion (88 billion euros) per year starting in 2020. A running tally published last week by the UN showed that climate finance is roughly on track to hit that total, but disagreements remain over the sources of funding and how much will be earmarked for adapting to climate change. Importantly, one of the Paris Agreement's long-term goals is to make all finance flows consistent with low-carbon and climate-ready economic development, which will be measured in trillions, not billions. |
With the direst environmental warnings yet still ringing in their ears, nations gathered in Poland Sunday for a UN summit aimed at heading off the "urgent threat" of runaway climate change.
The UN talks come at a crucial juncture in mankind's response to planetary warming. The smaller, poorer nations that will bare its devastating brunt are pushing for richer states to make good on the promises they made in the 2015 Paris agreement.
In Paris three years ago, countries committed to limit global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and to the safer cap of 1.5C if at all possible.
But with only a single degree Celsius of warming so far, the world has already seen a crescendo of deadly wildfires, heatwaves and hurricanes made more destructive by rising seas.
"Climate change impacts have never been worse," Patricia Espinosa told journalists after Sunday's first negotiating session.
"This reality is telling us that we need to do much more."
In a rare intervention, presidents of previous UN climate summits issued a joint statement as the talks got underway, calling on states to take "decisive action... to tackle these urgent threats".
"The impacts of climate change are increasingly hard to ignore," said the statement, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. "We require deep transformations of our economies and societies."
At the COP24 climate talks, nations must agree to a rulebook palatable to all 183 states who have ratified the Paris deal.
This is far from a given: the dust is still settling from US President Donald Trump's decision to ditch the Paris accord.
G20 leaders on Saturday agreed a final communique after their summit in Buenos Aires, declaring that the Paris Agreement was "irreversible".
But it said the US "reiterates its decision to withdraw" from the landmark accord.
The UN negotiations got off to a chaotic start in the Polish mining city of Katowice Sunday, with the opening session delayed nearly three hours by a series out last-ditch submissions from countries.
Even solid progress on the Paris goals may not be enough to prevent runaway global warming, as a series of major climate reports have outlined.
- 'Failure to act will be catastrophic' -
Just this week, the UN's environment programme said the voluntary national contributions agreed in Paris would have to triple if the world was to cap global warming below 2C.
For 1.5C, they must increase fivefold.
While the data are clear, a global political consensus over how to tackle climate change remains elusive.
"Katowice may show us if there will be any domino effect" following the US withdrawal, said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a main architect of the Paris deal.
Brazil's strongman president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, for one, has promised to follow the American lead during his campaign.
Even the most strident climate warnings -- spiralling temperatures, global sea-level rises, mass crop failures -- are something that many developed nations will only have to tackle in future.
But many other countries are already dealing with the droughts, higher seas and catastrophic storms climate change is exacerbating.
"A failure to act now risks pushing us beyond a point of no return with catastrophic consequences for life as we know it," said Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, of the UN talks.
A key issue up for debate is how the fight against climate change is funded, with developed and developing nations still world's apart in their demands.
Poorer nations argue that rich countries, which are responsible for the vast majority of historic carbon emissions, must help others to fund climate action.
"Developed nations led by the US will want to ignore their historic responsibilities and will say the world has changed," said Meena Ramam, from the Third World Network advocacy group.
"The question really is: how do you ensure that ambitious actions are done in an equitable way?"
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