Javadekar presents goals of Paris agreement to Cabinet

The pledge uniquely incorporates under one roof a diverse range of entities that are already committed to quickly mitigate emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Now, with the Paris Agreement in place, our thoughts must immediately turn to implementation. The 32-page document spells out humanity’s new, official plan to confront the crisis of climate change.

In Paris, Japanese negotiators kept a relatively low profile.

It is impossible to look at the proceedings in Paris without considering the dark shadow of last month’s deadly terrorist attacks.

The new Paris Agreement on climate change is a remarkable diplomatic achievement – remarkable mainly for representing a consensus among 195 states.

“What I see is an agreement with no timetables, no targets, with vague, wild aspirations”, British journalist George Monbiot told me two days after the talks ended.

Developing nations are among those that could be most impacted. I am pleased to inform the House that India has been able to secure its interest and that of the developing countries in this agreement.

A low-carbon future will take way more than words, though.

The conference opened with the largest gathering of heads of state in history.

After many years of negotiations, nations have reached a historic moment in the fight against climate change. Maybe Republicans aren’t as willing to jump on Paris, because they realize climate denial won’t work in their favor. Just about everywhere on the planet, climate science is accepted as fact.

Noting that the agreement unequivocally acknowledges the imperative of climate justice, Mr Bishnoi said the deal based itself on the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities.

Responding to calls from citizens countrywide, our delegation returned to a more co-operative approach, advocating for inclusion of human rights and indigenous knowledge, along with recognition of the critical importance of the 1.5 C goal.

However, climate researcher and consultant for the LDCs Salimul Haque termed the Paris agreement a successful one, “The world for the first time has a target of bringing down the global temperature by 2 degrees Celsius and of keeping it within 1.5 degrees Celsius”.

These seemingly small differences matter.

That’s not enough for residents of the Marshall Islands, a tiny strong of atolls in the Pacific that increasingly is buffeted by storm surges as the sea level rises.

First, the negative effects of global warming will not become irreversible only after the earth’s average temperature has risen 2 degrees Celsius.

The Paris Agreement did include a section that raises the prospects of greater use of carbon markets and carbon pricing mechanisms, but it stopped short of backing calls for a global carbon pricing system.

“COP21 was a landmark and not just for the Paris agreement by governments”, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said. “Rich countries, who are responsible for this crisis… now want to shift the burden of responsibility from the rich to the poor”, Rehman added.

The trouble with climate change is that it does not recognise borders – it’s a global problem, requiring global solutions.

Bill McKibben, a climate change activist and founder of 350.org, an organisation lobbying governments on the urgency of tackling climate change, said that the “power of the fossil fuel industry is reflected in the text, which drags out transition so far that endless climate damage will be done”. Seven decades later, in Paris, nations have united in the face of another threat – the threat to life as we know it due to a rapidly warming planet.