The initial commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol was extended until 2012. This year, at COP18 in Doha, Qatar, delegates agreed to extend the agreement until 2020 (without some industrialized countries withdrawing). They also reaffirmed their commitment made at COP17 in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, to create a new global climate treaty by 2015 that would require all major emitters not included in the Kyoto Protocol, such as China, India and the United States, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The new treaty – which was to become the Paris Agreement – was to completely replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2020. However, the Paris agreement came into force earlier than expected in November 2016. No country was able to denounce the withdrawal of the agreement before the expiry of a three-year period from the date of ratification. “We have worked very hard to ensure that every country in the world can join this new agreement. And so, by losing one, we feel like we have failed. You promised to put America at the forefront of everything you do, and you did it in different ways, from trade to national security, to protecting our borders, to the rights of Washington, D.C. And today, you put America first in terms of international agreements and the environment. Many countries have stated in their INDCs that they intend to use some form of international emissions trading scheme to implement their contributions. In order to ensure the environmental integrity of these transactions, the agreement requires the parties to respect accounting practices and to avoid double counting of “mitigation results transferred internationally.” In addition, the agreement will create a new mechanism that would help contain and support sustainable development and could produce or certify negotiable emission units according to its design.
Under this agreement, China, for example, will be able to increase these emissions by an astonishing number of years – 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. We don`t. India is conditional on its participation in receiving billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from industrialized countries. There are many other examples. But at the end of the day, the Paris agreement is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States. Although the United States played an important role in the development of the climate agreement, it will be the only one of the 200 parties to withdraw from the pact. Yes, yes. The agreement is considered a “treaty” in international law, but only certain provisions are legally binding. The question of what provisions should be made mandatory was a central concern of many countries, particularly the United States, which wanted an agreement that the President could accept without the approval of Congress. The completion of this test excluded binding emissions targets and new binding financial commitments. However, the agreement contains binding procedural obligations, such as the requirements for the maintenance of successive NPNSPs and consideration of progress in their implementation.
In an effort to “significantly reduce the risks and effects of climate change,” the agreement calls for the average increase in global temperature over this century to be well below 2 degrees Celsius, while continuing efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. It also calls on countries to commit as quickly as possible to comparing global greenhouse gas emissions and to become carbon neutral by the second half of this century.