A Guide To The Paris Agreement And Intl. Climate Negotiations (Part 2)

This is the fifth article in a series exploring the global climate meetings, the Conferences of the Parties (COP). It explores the rest of the key elements of the Paris Agreement and the way they have influenced current global climate negotiations. The final article in the series will recap COP 27 and where international climate action stands after Sharm El Sheikh.

The Paris Agreement represents the most comprehensive global climate agreement ever developed. It is the roadmap for current climate negotiations and a framework for national commitments on emissions reduction (mitigation) and climate adaptation. The prior piece explored the overall objectives of Paris (Article 2), emissions reductions and carbon sinks (Articles 4 and 5), efforts at global collaboration (Articles 6, 10, and 11), and adaptation and losses (Articles 7 and 8).

This piece offers an accessible guide to the rest of the Paris Agreement. It covers climate finance (Article 9), mechanisms to promote transparency (Article 13), and the global stocktake (Article 14). It concludes by discussing the progress made in the subsequent Conferences of the Parties (COPs) since the Paris Agreement.

Climate finance

Both mitigation and adaptation goals depend on drastically scaling up climate finance. Article 9 tackles the responsibility of climate finance directly, stating that “developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation.” A $100 BN annual commitment to climate finance for developing nations was agreed upon a decade ago but developed nations have repeatedly fallen short of that commitment. The $100 BN itself is far short of what is needed to ensure a sustainable transition and climate resiliency.

The Paris Agreement expects all parties to “mobilize climate finance from a wide variety of sources,” with developed nations taking the lead. Climate finance will come from governmental sources, development finance institutions, and private sector actors. The IEA estimates that $3-5 TN in annual clean energy investment is needed to align with a net-zero world by 2050. The UNEP gap report suggests rising annual adaptation needs of $340 BN within developing nations by 2030. Given the shortfall in climate finance, scaling it up is a top priority for parties to the Paris Agreement.

Increasing transparency

Transparency is critical to maintaining effective collaboration, promoting mutual trust, and ensuring progress against global climate goals.

Under Article 13, countries are expected to provide a national inventory of greenhouse gases, accounting for human-caused emissions and carbon sinks. The countries should report other information relevant to their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and actions taken on adaptation and resilience. Developed nations should also report on progress on climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building assistance provided to developing nations.

In recent years, global climate negotiators have met to agree on common standards related to emissions targets, such as appropriate baseline years for emissions reductions and assumptions around the uptake of carbon dioxide by national sinks. The Paris Agreement also calls for national reports to be validated through a “technical expert review.”

Article 14 creates a “global stocktake” for evaluating overall mitigation, adaptation, and implementation efforts. The first stocktake will be released in 2023, with further reports every five years. The stocktake provides a global reference point to identify priorities and update national actions.

From commitments to action

Paris offers a global framework for tackling climate change, but the real challenge comes in implementing that framework. The most recent COPs have focused on turning the pledges of Paris into actionable steps towards a resilient, decarbonized future. In 2016 at COP 22, the Marrakech Partnership was created to support coordination between governments and non-state actors (including those in the private sector) to achieve global climate goals. At Katowice in 2018 (COP 24), parties agreed to the “Paris Rulebook,” which offered detailed guidance to countries on setting NDCs. In Madrid (COP 25), parties worked on enhancing collaborative mechanisms such as carbon markets and providing greater clarity on reporting, although most decisions were deferred until COP 26.

COP 26 in Glasgow was set to be an important meeting, as it marked five years since the Paris Agreement, meaning that nations were expected to submit their new NDCs. With the conference delayed by a year due to COVID, it took place in 2021 instead. COP 26 saw additional progress on the operation of global carbon markets and agreement on important transparency and comparability measures, including common timeframes for targets. The private sector also made a big show at COP 26, with net-zero pledges from major corporations and financial institutions. Questions of Loss and Damage and adaptation finance remained unresolved at the end of COP 26.

The final article in this series will offer a recap of COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh and where climate action goes from there.