Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is an agreement between 195 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with the aim of protecting the climate as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The Convention was adopted on 12 December 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris by all Parties to the UNFCCC, at the time 195 countries and the European Union, and provides for limiting man-made global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, a review study by Steffen et al. (2018) suggests that even the 2°C target may not be sufficient to safely prevent irreversible feedbacks from tipping elements in the Earth system, which would then move the Earth's climate into a hot period with temperatures several degrees higher than today. Therefore, according to the authors, a more ambitious temperature limit should be aimed for in order to minimize these risks as far as possible. In this context, the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5 °C Global Warming of 2018 also warns of irreversible consequences, as well as a further increase in heat extremes, heavy precipitation and droughts, and an additional rise in sea level.

As of 7 November 2017, all states in the world except Syria recognise the Paris Agreement. That same month, Syria also announced its intention to join. Nicaragua had also joined, after initially refusing to join because it considered the commitments in the treaty too weak. US President Donald Trump announced on 1 June 2017 that the US would withdraw from the Convention. This was officially completed on 4 November 2020, but was withdrawn by current US President Joe Biden on 20 January 2021.

The Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016, 30 days after 55 countries, which also account for at least 55% of emissions, had completed ratification. On 3 November 2016, one day before the agreement entered into force, a total of 92 states had ratified the agreement. In addition, 163 states had drawn up climate protection plans, for the Federal Republic of Germany this is the Climate Protection Plan 2050 with a long list of politically controversial individual measures. In Switzerland, the _{CO2 Act, which} has been in force since 2000, is being amended; the core element remains the financially neutral _{CO2 steering levy,} interim targets are being set and reviewed (evaluation), and air traffic within Switzerland as well as to and from countries of the European Economic Area is also being made subject to the obligation.

In the Framework Convention on Climate Change, legal instruments can be adopted to achieve the Convention's goals. For the period from 2008 to 2020, greenhouse gas reduction measures have already been agreed with the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997 and its Doha Amendments adopted in 2012. From 2020, the provisions of the Paris Agreement will apply.

The World Climate Conference and the Paris Agreement received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation for 2016.

Ratification and entry into force

During the UN Climate Change Conference in 2011, the so-called Durban Platform (and the ad hoc working group for the Durban Platform for deepening action) was established with the aim of negotiating a legal instrument that would then set out climate action from 2020.

The agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. In April 2016, 175 countries, including the United States, China and Germany, signed the agreement. By early September 2016, the United States had adopted the treaty and the People's Republic of China had ratified it, a day before the G-20 summit in China. The two are the countries with the largest greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to that, a number of small states and many island nations had already completed the ratification process. On September 21 - the International Day of Peace - 31 more countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates, joined. This meant that 60 states had joined, accounting for around 48% of emissions. In Germany, the Bundestag and Bundesrat passed ratification at the end of September 2016; formal completion of ratification by handing over the documents to the UN took place on 5 October 2016. On 2 October 2016, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, India, the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, ratified the agreement, bringing the number of states that have ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to to 62, accounting for 51.89 per cent of emissions.

On 5 October 2016, the European Union, Canada and Nepal ratified the treaty. As a result, 71 countries responsible for around 57% of global greenhouse gas emissions had joined the agreement at that time, meeting the two thresholds of 55% of emissions and 55 countries. Therefore, the agreement was able to enter into force on 4 November 2016, 30 days after the two thresholds were exceeded.

As of 17 November 2016, when the UK joined, a total of 111 countries had ratified the agreement.

As of May 8, 2017, with Georgia's ratification, there were 145 states, representing a total of 82.95 percent of global emissions.

After the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, Turkish President Erdoğan questioned his country's ratification of the agreement. It should not be passed in parliament as long as the "promises made to Turkey are not fulfilled".

Switzerland ratified the agreement on 6 October 2017, and it entered into force on 5 November 2017.

As of May 13, 2018, 176 states had ratified the agreement.

Paris Agreement signed and ratified signed but not yet ratified Signatory and ratifying States of the European Union

Announced, completed and withdrawn resignations

USA

On 1 June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The treaty was very unfair to the US. Therefore, he wanted to conduct new negotiations. He had been elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris. Already a day earlier it became known that a committee with the cooperation of the then EPA head Scott Pruitt should coordinate the further steps for the withdrawal. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump had announced the withdrawal of the USA from the agreement. Trump also declared in the speech that the US would "as of today" stop implementing all commitments made at the Paris meeting, including payments to the Green Climate Fund.

The withdrawal process was initiated on November 4, 2019.

The Trump administration was split on the issue of withdrawal. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, as well as the then advisors Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller were considered the most vehement supporters of a withdrawal. Trump himself had claimed that man-made climate change was invented by China to hurt American factories economically. Those in favor of staying in the agreement were said to be then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. In opinion polls, 71% of Americans as well as 57% of Republicans said the U.S. should remain in the agreement. Many of the largest U.S. companies, including oil and coal companies, also supported staying in the agreement. The fossil fuel industry was split on the decision, reflecting the two basic strategies for dealing with global warming: One part of the industry continues to try to level the research findings by cherry-picking and launching attacks on the UN processes, while another part accepts the research findings and instead tries to convince policymakers of "clean coal" and energy efficiency, thus gaining political support for new "low emissions" coal plants. By contrast, a group of 22 Republican senators who have collectively received more than $10 million from the fossil fuel industry over the past five years had lobbied for termination. Among them were Mitch McConnell (b. 1942), James Inhofe (b. 1934), Rand Paul (b. 1963) and Texan Ted Cruz.

Trump's withdrawal decision has been criticized by senior politicians and heads of very large companies around the world. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and EU Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete, among others, expressed regret at the decision. Former U.S. President Barack Obama criticized Trump's administration for joining "a small handful of nations in denying the future." The U.S.Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed outrage, stressing that the decision would cause harm not only to the U.S. but to the entire world, and especially to the poorest communities. Even before Trump's official announcement that he would withdraw from the agreement, many countries that are important in terms of climate policy, such as the People's Republic of China, India, France and Canada, had declared that they would stick to the agreement regardless of Trump's decision.

A Guardian commentator wrote that the decision was the biggest success of the climate denial industry to date. Several of its key figures, such as Myron Ebell, had even received invitations to speak at the White House Rose Garden. It is now time to take this denial industry seriously, he said. The New York Times called the withdrawal declaration "disgraceful" in an editorial and wrote that the only clear winners were "hardcore climate deniers" like Scott Pruitt and Stephen Bannon and fossil fuel industry interest groups. Only future generations will be able to gauge the full extent of Trump's "incredibly short-sighted approach to climate change," he added. The withdrawal was a "terrible decision" that represented "in big neon letters" that Trump knew nothing about, or cared little about, climate science, environmental damage, and resulting problems; that he was unaware that the U.S. was historically the largest producer of carbon dioxide and therefore had a special obligation; that he did not realize what further diplomatic damage the decision would entail; that his dereliction of official duty could tempt more countries to withdraw from the agreement or reduce their commitments. Perhaps most astonishing of all, however, he said that as the astute businessman he portrayed himself to be, he appeared to be blind to the damage his decision to withdraw would have on American economic interests.

Climate change researcher Benjamin D. Santer called Trump's withdrawal speech an "astonishing concentrate of some of the worst arguments of climate confusionists and fossil fuel lobbyists," and that was putting it politely. According to media fact checks, nearly all of the sentences in Trump's withdrawal statement were substantively inaccurate and contained misrepresentations or distortions.

Three U.S. state governors announced on June 1, 2017, that they are forming an alliance of states to remain committed to the Paris Agreement. The governors are Jay Inslee for Washington State, Andrew Cuomo for New York State, and Jerry Brown for California. The next day, six governors announced that their respective states would join the alliance: Dannel Malloy (Connecticut), Charlie Baker (Massachusetts), Phil Scott (Vermont), Gina Raimondo (Rhode Island), Kate Brown (Oregon) and David Ige (Hawaii). Still in June, the United States Climate Alliance was joined by the states of Governors Terry McAuliffe (Virginia), Mark Dayton (Minnesota), and John C. Carney Jr. (Delaware), as well as Puerto Rico, an outlying U.S. territory, through its Governor Ricky Rosselló. In July, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper announced the state's entry.

Representatives from several U.S. cities, states, and businesses announced their commitment to the United Nations to remain committed to the Paris Agreement.

On November 4, 2020, the U.S. officially withdrew from the climate agreement.

The 46th President of the United States Joe Biden (Democratic Party) signed a decree on his first day in office on January 20, 2021, as announced in advance, that he would rejoin the global climate agreement. It became legally effective 30 days later. Thus, the United States has been a member again since 19 February 2021.

Brazil

Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected Brazil's new president at the end of October 2018, also announced his country's possible withdrawal from the global climate agreement in his campaign platform.