Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century in the world. People all over the world including Bangladesh, are suffering from different climatic disasters. The aggravated changes are alarming across the world.
The future of the planet, security of the people, and sustainability of the global ecosystems were put on the Paris climate negotiation table.
In the presence of about 150 heads of the states, the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) officially started on November 30 and continued till December 12, although the negotiation was supposed to be completed by December 11.
The ad hoc Working Group on Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) plenary commenced on December 29 afternoon. After a two-week long discussion, the Paris Agreement was adopted on Saturday December 12.
Overall, it might be a great diplomatic success to bring all parties (countries) to a common platform and have them agree on all major building blocks, including mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technology development and transfer capacity building, and others.
But the Paris Agreement explicitly shows the failure of both developed and major emitting countries to agree to hold specifically the global average temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Some details on the major issues are discussed below:
Mitigation
A deadline was equally important for all countries to decide in Paris. At the end of the negotiation, the Paris Agreement failed to decide on the specific target of reducing GHG emission and date for meeting this target.
All discussions regarding mitigation target and deadline during last five years (after Copenhagen Agreement) went almost in vain in Paris. Without distinct target, mitigation might be challenged.
Adaptation
In brief, the agreement recognised the need to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change across the world.
Although the decision section provides some preference in terms of adaptation planning and support to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the priority of LDCs was not mentioned at all in Article 7 (adaptation) of the Paris Agreement.
The loss and damage
The Paris Agreement recognises the loss and damage of the vulnerable people due to climate change. But it totally failed to agree on institutional and financial mechanism to address climate change induced displacement, migration, and planned relocation.
It also failed to ensure that the loss and damages are supported through financial mechanism of the convention. The agreement does not include compensation to the most vulnerable communities across the world.
Finance
The Paris Agreement mentions that developed countries shall support developing countries to implement both mitigation and adaptation actions.
But again, it does not mention any financial support to address loss and damages of the most vulnerable people. The road map on pre-2020 and post-2020 finance mobilisation to address mitigation and adaptation is not clear in the agreement. The sources, scale, and allocation between adaptation and mitigation are not distinctly mentioned in the agreement.
Technology development and transfer
To address climate change and meet the sustainable development goals, it is important for developed and industrialised countries to agree to share/transfer both adaptation and mitigation technologies under existing technology framework with/to the most vulnerable countries, including LDCs.
However, this agreement does not have any reference for providing priority support to LDCs in terms of technology development and transfer. The current emission reduction commitment of many industrialised or developed countries including the US, Japan, EU, Russia are much lower than it should be in terms of “fair share” and in accordance with the convention.
This low-level reduction commitment from developed countries may result in the global average temperature to increase more than 3C above pre-industrial levels by 2030.
This means the global leaders were successful in having the agreement, but failed to address science, evidence, and the reality of climate change to a large extent.
