INTL 3500/50 Environmental and Energy Security

5th March 2021, Assignment Paper

Shradda Thapa
4164630

"Paris agreement at five: diverging views on where we stand and what

is to be done. What do you think?"

You remember: Long-term temperature goal (Art. 2) of the Paris Agreement (agreed 5 years

ago) is limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing

efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees (above pre-industrial levels)

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change

formally entered into force on November 4, 2016. With more than 190 countries aiming

to strengthen the global climate effort, the Paris Climate agreement has successfully

been the biggest initiative to tackle issues of climate change with highest number of

ratifications with a common issue of climate deterioration, where countries commit to

‘nationally determined contributions.’ Hence, with the 2015 Paris Agreement, a global

consensus is required for the participating countries to allow them to set their own

targets and determine their own national contributions to secure our Earth. Other

countries have continued to become parties to the Paris Agreement as they complete

their domestic approval procedures. While the member countries have agreed to limit

their greenhouse gas emissions to keep average global temperature under 2 degrees

Celsius, most countries are now pursuing an average of 1.5 degrees while many

developed countries have ambitiously announced to have net-zero emissions in the next

3 decades.
 The major determinant of these emissions has a framework of climate protection

personalized plan called a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) serving as an

efficient and capable means to lower carbon emissions. This submission represents each

country’s self-defined mitigation goals for the period beginning in 2020. The countries

meet every on a 5-year cycle to communicate their actions towards their NDCs and what

has been achieved so far to reduce these emissions and to reach the goals of Paris

Agreement. Although a personalized framework is a promising step ‘to build resilience

to adapt to the impacts of rising temperatures’, it is worthwhile to note that these NDCs

aren't legally binding. This ‘bottom approach’ of the agreement with active participation

from developing to developed countries have a short end on their bargaining side, as

developing countries will have slower growth rate which would make it difficult to meet

the frequency of development of the developed country. The rest of the world would

need to drop to virtually zero emissions by 2030 for the planet to reach its goal of

limiting the increase in temperature from pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Current policy of 2 degrees would still raise the emission level by another 50 years,

which will lead to heat waves, drought, oceanic changes and rise in sea levels, artic and

Antarctic thaws and many more.

“One point five to stay alive”, is an optimistic target of the Paris Agreement, and

for this goal, decarbonizing economic sectors of transportation, agriculture, energy

sources, infrastructural industry and many more must be adopted by the end of the

century. As of March 2020, the average for the global land and ocean surface
temperature was “1.16°C (2.09°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F) and

the second highest in the 141-year record (NOAA, 2020).” Hence, it is important to

understand that 1.5°C and 2°C are societal targets, rather than key trigger points in the

Earth system to rejuvenate the climate order. Although, major world actors have created

a global agreement to limit carbon emissions, the undeniable fact is in our hands – Ice

caps of the Arctic have melted and have drowned the low-lying regions beneath rising

sea levels. 5 years from now, small island countries might have been flooded with the

rise in the sea levels as the “global average temperature are already around 1.2°C above

pre-industrial levels (Ibid).” While Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was highly ambitious of

developed countries to take climate matters with serious concern, Paris Agreement

needs to have realistic, ambitious carbon limits to not fragment the commitments to

ensure its protocol of the current policies adopted continues to exist. With Paris

agreement ideal in theory, the reality is much graver and implementation in practice is

difficult and acquires numerous challenges.

To overcome these challenges, first and foremost priority should be given to the

NDCs and make them legally binding. While countries have allowed themselves the

freedom of allocating their own resources to exert their efforts, the monitoring body of

these actions are severely lacking. International judgement and encouragement don’t

solely pressure the countries to stick to their NDCs, mostly seen with the case of USA,

the dominant carbon producer followed by China. There needs to be a penalizing factor

to these goals when majority of countries don’t comply with their promises, resulting in

harsh judgement from the rest of the world. Without any legal or financial repercussion,
most participating countries won’t be inclined to align with the global interest of

reducing carbon emissions. During the tenure of the Trump Administration, where USA

withdrew its support from the Paris Agreement, upon claiming it to be a hoax, has

heavily endangered our planet. Since, Paris Agreement doesn’t have a fixed tenure of its

membership countries can revoke their partnership in order to upscale their economies.

“Because the Paris agreement is still flexible that any country can opt out at any point in

time, there is still no major progress recorded so far (Independent, 2020).” With higher

standards of enforcement against excessive carbon emitters - Economic sanctions,

Compensation charges and International humiliation can only the Paris Agreement be

regulated thoroughly.

Secondly, alternative sources of energy consumption are the next viable solution

along with the “use of a technology called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

(BECCS)” that grows in mass scale to “absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, burning these

crops to produce bioenergy and then capturing the resulting emissions from the air to

store in land or under the sea (Dunne, 2020)” There is still a heavy usage of burning

woods and fossil fuels for consumption at a frantic rate, while there is a continuation “to

destroy the world’s carbon sinks, by cutting down forests – the world is still losing an

area of forest the size of the UK each year, despite commitments to stop deforestation –

as well as drying out peatlands and wetlands and reducing the ocean’s capacity to absorb

carbon from the air (Harvey, 2020, Guardian).” While many already consider Covid-19 a

biohazard weapon to eliminate population with the change in nature, climate, ecosystem

and hydrology, a “greater loss of life and perhaps the end of our civilizations” is the most
impending doom (Ibid).” Hence, newer treaties specific to certain type of emissions

could be proposed to complement the Paris agreement. Three R’s, Re-use, Re-cycle, and

Re-duce can be implemented in a large-scale by decomposing waste materials, old

automobile garages and sewage cleaning. Restabilizing and replacing old automobiles or

updating into a solar powered or electric powered vehicle will also contribute to these

factors. Furthermore, burning these BECCS crops to produce bioenergy and then

capturing the resulting emissions from the air to store in land or under the sea.

“For the goals of the Paris treaty to be met, the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia must

actively participate, and the rest of the countries must increase their environmental

contribution (Independent, 2020).” With developing countries utilizing their resources

every day, a reliable electricity sources must be mandated. In countries where

development is already underway, energy use will soar as increasing wealth leads to a

swelling middle class and the lifestyle trappings that brings with it. Climate change

cannot be combatted with natural resources being significantly used for consumption,

so developed countries must come together with implementing alternative energy

sources and utilizing them in developing countries as well. Small changes to domestic

policies of each country, can have a huge impact and lead to meeting the goals of the

Paris agreement. Countries must set out a plan to substitute coal for renewable

electricity, in order to decrease finances and increase energy efficiency. They must also

seek out healthier soils and forests in order to store carbon (Independent, 2020).” Given

what’s at stake, it may be worth “deploying geoengineering tools, which reflect the sun’s
heat away from Earth, and so keep global heating to safe levels” to buy us more time to

conjure up with a plan to save the climate (Vince, 2019).”

In conclusion, countries can begin to plan and execute short term goals that allow

them to reach their long-term ones. With the ongoing pandemic crisis, the green

recovery has taken an elaborated step to stabilization despite extracting fossil fuels for

emergency tenure. “But with so many countries now committed to net zero emissions,

and an increasing number coming forward with short term targets for 2030 to set us on

that path, there are still grounds for optimism (Harvey, 2020).” At the end of the day

climate is more of a habitat than a matter of degree threshold and active, conscious level

of climate protection effort must be carries out in small to large scale.

References:

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global
Climate Report for March 2020, published online April 2020, retrieved on March 1,
2021 from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202003.

Harvey, F (2020). The Paris agreement five years on: is it strong enough to avert
climate catastrophe. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/08/the-paris-agreement-five-
years-on-is-it-strong-enough-to-avert-climate-catastrophe
Dunne, D (2020). ‘1.5C to stay alive’: Is the Paris Agreement’s most optimistic climate
target still within reach? The Independent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/paris-agreement-
temperature-rise-climate-change-b1770096.html

Vince, G (2019). The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will
work. The Observer. Extracted from the Assignment folders.

“Is the 1.5C Paris Climate Target Still within Reach?” The Independent, Independent
Digital News and Media, 16 Dec. 2020.
www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/paris-agreement-temperature-rise-
climate-change-b1770096.html.