7 Key Facts About the Paris Climate Agreement

After two weeks of negotiations, the world’s nations achieved an unprecedented feat: a binding, mostly comprehensive agreement to fight climate change — not only that, but one that includes world powers that have until this point resisted any sort of formal agreement.

By no means is the agreement perfect, but it is milestone. The agreement also recognizes that a one-time talk is not sufficient to deal with the matter — and so the parties will meet again at regular intervals to report their progress.

So what should you know about the Paris agreement? Here are 7 key facts to bear in mind:

1. Goals and Stretch Goals

The talks affirmed the key goal of keeping climate change under 2 degrees Celsius. However, it bears mentioning that climate change has already raised global temperatures 1 degree C, and meeting that 2-degree target will be a challenge.

Still, the agreement also encourages governments to strive to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s mostly a symbolic gesture, but one that acknowledges how important it is to mitigate climate change.

2. Individual Goals and Targets

While the overarching goal is to keep global warming under 2 degrees, each nation is left to determine the best way to go about that, and to set its own targets for reducing carbon in the atmosphere. The expectation is that developed nations will set the most stringent targets to begin with. There are no provisions for how much the largest contributors of pollution — China, India, and the United States — will have to reduce their carbon emissions compared to other nations. The agreement also acknowledges that developing nations are at a disadvantage compared to wealthier countries.

3. Mandatory Reporting

Despite the lack of explicit goals in the Paris agreement, each nation is obligated to report its progress. Every five years, these countries will file a report of their progress, with the expectation to step up their efforts over time.

Most important is the creation of an independent auditing team that will evaluate each nation’s report using a standardized accounting system. The exact process for this has yet to be determined, however.

4. No Punitive Measures For Missed Targets

Despite the mandatory reporting and binding nature of most of the language in the agreement, there’s no actual penalties for nations that miss their own target goals. That’s likely a significant reason why the agreement succeeded (in addition to France’s efforts to include every nation in the discussions, negotiations, and drafting of the final agreement, not to mention its flawless logistics).

However, the Paris accord is also the first time a legal document has acknowledged that climate change does cause loss and damage. While it doesn’t establish any sort of liability, it does at least acknowledge that accountability is important to minimize the suffering of others.

5. Funding for Developing Nations

The agreement reiterates the commitment by industrialized nations to provide funding for less-developed countries — $100 billion per year by 2020, with the contribution expected to increase after that, and a meeting in 2025 to set new goals. However, this commitment is placed in the preamble, not in any legally binding part of the document. Many nations criticized the agreement for this reason, in part because $100 billion still may not be enough to mitigate climate change, or to help those most affected by it adapt to the changes.

6. The Significance of Forests

The agreement also includes wording that formally recognizes the importance of trees in offsetting carbon in the atmosphere — which is significant given how prevalent deforestation has become. This section of the agreement encourages nations to provide financial incentives to combat the loss of forests, which could prove to be a powerful motivator to take up the challenge of preserving the world’s trees.

7. A Carbon-Neutrality Provision

The document also reaffirms a global commitment to reaching carbon neutrality by the second half of this century — in other words, a goal to stop releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than can be removed. While the Paris agreement makes it clear that all nations are expect to move away from reliance on fossil fuels and to invest in sustainable green energy, the actual deadline for this goal is a bit nebulous — just some time in the second half of the century.

The Paris agreement is far from perfect. The whole document is a compromise on the part of every nation that participated in the talks, and so invariably some parties will feel the agreement goes too far, and others not far enough. But it is also an unprecedented success, bringing together delegates from almost every country to discuss the problem and laying the groundwork for continued discussions, and establishing at least some level of accountability. That’s ultimately a good thing.