Historic Paris Agreement On Climate Change Reached By Nearly 200 Countries

Speaking in a televised address from the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama said the new agreement, reached by almost 200 countries at the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourge, France, near Paris, offered “the best chance we have to save the one planet we have”.

Countries will also have to report transparently on their progress, and every five years nations will assess their progress and submit new plans.

“In the face of an unprecedented challenge, you have demonstrated unprecedented leadership”, he said of the deal involving 195 nations.

The agreement was hailed as the culmination of 23 years of United Nations efforts to forge a collective starting point for dealing with a phenomenon that transcends national borders.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the outcome of Paris agreement had no winners or losers and climate justice was the lone victor. “This is a resounding success for multilateralism”. “For the first time, every country in the world has pledged to curb emissions, strengthen resilience and join in a common cause to take a common climate action”, he said.

“This is as a result of protracted negotiations”.

“All countries have agreed to hold global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius”.

Under the deal, there will be five-year reviews to take stock of implementation, and a first such assessment is scheduled for 2018.

“Governments have agreed to binding, robust, transparent rules of the road to ensure that all countries do what they have agreed across a range of issues”.

The deal states global greenhouse gas emissions should peak as soon as possible and essentially calls for the world to achieve net zero emissions in the second half of this century by achieving a “balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases”. “This moment can be a turning point for the world”.

“The president has long recognized that reaching an agreement like this, ultimately, can be a very powerful benefit for the US economy”, Earnest said Monday. The separate treatment of Loss and Damage in the Agreement is also a most welcomed development. “What matters is that today, we can be more confident this planet is going to be in better shape for the next generation”.

Tom Ballantine, chair of the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition of charities, said: “Before the Paris talks, many hundreds of thousands of people around the world came together to demand urgent climate action and to highlight the positive changes that communities are already taking to reduce carbon emissions”.