Historic Paris agreement on climate change

All countries have agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and, given the grave risks, to strive for 1.5 degrees. The $100 billion in finance has always seemed problematic.

With these headlines appearing in newspapers across the country, Canadians must have been relieved that they don’t need to worry about climate change almost as much now that everything has been worked out in Paris. Business as usual will not suffice to combat global warming. But, in the end, despite all the hoopla, applause and celebration, small states lost.

Jim Overland, a NOAA oceanographer and one of the more than 70 co-authors of the report, suggested that even the newly inked Paris deal may not be enough-at least in the short term-to turn things around.

Opponents of a United Nations climate deal threatened to block federal funds for climate aid, arguing that Congress first needs to scrutinize the Paris agreement before it releases funds.

One major point of discord was an attempt by the USA to discard the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR).

Second, we need a clean-energy transformation at the speed and scale of the digital revolution. The path-changing outcome of the deal is that it is going to change the state of global markets, decidedly away from long-term investment in fossil fuels.

In truth, the climate change action plans submitted by 188 countries would lead to a temperature rise as high as 2.7 degrees Celsius.

And the Compact of Mayors announced that 360 cities – representing more than 343 million people across the globe – had pledged to drastically reduce their carbon emissions. We have to hope that all the scientists who predict this scenario are wrong. Shri Javadekar pointed out that India’s right to grow has been fully protected by the Paris Agreement, which also provides for transfer of technology to the developing countries. We all have to solve this problem with hard work stopping extreme oil, replacing coal with clean energy, and protecting forests.

Dan Steinbock is research director of global business at the India, China and America Institute (US), a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for worldwide Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). The parties to the Convention-195 countries in all, plus the European Union as a regional economic integration entity-agreed on the need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases within the next two decades, and defined their own respective reduction commitments. Therefore, attention should be paid to them. Industrialised countries are responsible for the damage to the global climate, therefore they must compensate vulnerable countries for extreme climate events. But, liability is completely ignored because it was opposed by the polluting industrialized countries. The fact that most of the COP21 agreement is not legally binding but instead voluntary effectively weakens the strength of the agreement.

Most importantly, a change was made from a penalty-oriented agreement, which would sanction nations that can not meet reduction targets, to an incentive one that encourages cooperation toward meeting individual countries’ targets. In Paris, CEOs from various industries – ranging from cement to technology companies – made clear pledges to decrease carbon footprints, invest in renewables, and manage resources sustainably. Questions to be addressed include:• How multilateral funds, such as the Global Environment Facility and Green Climate Fund, can help catalyze the shift to a carbon-neutral and climate-resilient global economy; • How countries with financial capacity, such as the US and Japan, can cooperate and demonstrate global leadership to improve climate resilience in the most vulnerable regions; • How and to what extent countries and multilateral efforts can leverage private sector finance, particularly for climate adaptation.