Everything you need to know about the Paris Agreement

Climate change represents a global emergency that transcends national borders, requiring coordinated solutions at all levels and international cooperation to facilitate a transition to a low-carbon economy.

To address this crisis and its negative impacts, world leaders gathered at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris made a significant breakthrough on December 12, 2015, by adopting the historic Paris Agreement.

What exactly is the Paris Agreement? What are its main objectives? How is it structured and implemented? Has it led to notable advances in the fight against climate change?

Find the answers in this article.

What is the Paris Agreement?

Definition of the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is an international treaty aimed at limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to limit this increase to 1.5°C. Adopted in 2015 during COP21 in Paris, this agreement is the first to be legally binding and to bring together 194 signatory parties.

👉 The 194 Parties include 193 countries plus the European Union.

Today, the 2°C target has become a key benchmark for assessing global progress in combating climate change.

Note

It's important to highlight that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long warned about the risks of exceeding the +1.5°C threshold. Exceeding this threshold could lead to significant climate changes, such as heatwaves, droughts, and various natural disasters.

To limit global warming to 1.5°C, our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should peak no later than 2025 and then decrease by 43% by 2030. In the longer term, carbon neutrality should be achieved by 2050.

Officially, the countries that signed the Paris Agreement commit to keeping temperature increases below +2°C while continuing efforts to not exceed +1.5°C.

In France, the Paris Agreement was implemented in 2017 through the Climate Plan initiated by the then Minister of Ecological and Inclusive Transition, Nicolas Hulot.

Objectives

The Paris Agreement has three main objectives:

1. Significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 2°C by the end of the century, with the additional goal of restraining it to 1.5°C.
2. Review national commitments every five years to increase climate ambitions.
3. Provide financial support to developing countries to mitigate the impacts of climate change, enhance their resilience, and improve their adaptive capacities.

Did you know? It took six years to finalize the Paris Agreement. The implementation guidelines, detailing how the agreement would be operationalized, were published in December 2018 during COP24 and validated in November 2021 during COP26.

How it works

The Paris Agreement operates on a five-year cycle, during which countries undertake increasingly ambitious climate actions. Every five years, each country must present a revised national action plan, known as a "nationally determined contribution" (NDC).

In their NDCs, countries detail the measures they will take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to meet the targets set in the Paris Agreement. They also communicate planned actions to strengthen their resilience and adapt to the effects of rising temperatures.

To better guide efforts toward the long-term goal, countries are invited, under the Paris Agreement, to formulate and communicate long-term low-emission development strategies (LT-LEDS). Unlike NDCs, these are not mandatory.

In 2023, the first "global stocktake" assesses the progress made against the goals of the Paris Agreement. This process further encourages countries to take ambitious climate actions to keep warming below 1.5°C.

Finally, the Enhanced Transparency Framework established by the Paris Agreement stipulates that all signatory countries must now report more transparently on the measures taken and progress made in mitigation, adaptation, and the support provided or received, starting in 2024.

How do countries support each other?

The Paris Agreement establishes a framework for financial, technical, and capacity-building support to needy countries.

Finance

The Paris Agreement reaffirms that developed countries must take the initiative to provide financial aid to less industrialized and more vulnerable countries while encouraging voluntary contributions from other parties. Climate financing is essential:

• To mitigate the environmental impact in developing countries by supporting their own green transitions.
• To help these countries adapt to the adverse effects of climate change to which they are often exposed.

Technology

The Paris Agreement promotes a vision of technology development and transfer between countries, fostering solidarity among states.

Capacity building

Developing countries face significant challenges in their capacity to respond to climate change. Therefore, the Paris Agreement places great importance on enhancing climate capacities in these countries. This capacity building should be initiated by developed countries, which generally have more resources.

The first assessment of the Paris Agreement

At COP28, a crucial point was the first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement, evaluating the progress made toward the climate goals set by the agreement.

Key takeaways

• Climate commitments: current actions by countries put the planet on a warming trajectory between 2.5°C and 2.9°C by the end of the century, well above the 1.5°C target (UN, 2023). In 2022, global emissions reached record levels, increasing by 1.2% between 2021 and 2022, peaking at 57.4 gigatons of CO2 equivalent.
• Global assessment: the first global stocktake at COP28 shows that current commitments are insufficient, with only a 2% reduction in emissions projected between 2019 and 2030, far from the 43% needed to limit warming to 1.5°C.
• NDCs: nationally determined contributions, which should be regularly updated, often lack ambition and are not always met. "Most NDCs are no more ambitious than before," notes Marine Pouget (head of international climate governance at Réseau Action Climat), adding that the announced plans "are not necessarily being followed through." "There's a difference between what's announced and what's actually done. And even if we consider them, we remain above 2°C."
• Alarming forecasts: according to a study in Nature Climate Change, the +1.5°C threshold could be reached by 2034. Already, some days have seen global temperatures exceed +2°C above pre-industrial levels.
• Gaps and challenges: the Paris Agreement does not address fossil fuels, the main sources of greenhouse gases. It also relies on governments' willingness to implement it in their national legislations.
• Climate financing: rich countries had promised $100 billion per year to developing countries for climate action by 2020. This target was likely reached in 2022 according to the OECD, but it is now obsolete given the growing needs of developing countries, estimated at $2.4 trillion annually between 2026 and 2030.

What's next?

In response, parties have committed to presenting their updated climate plans for 2035 by COP30, aligning them with the 1.5°C goal based on the best available scientific data and the results of the 2023 global stocktake.