Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
12/18/2015
Following last week’s adoption of the Paris Agreement, the world’s first global deal binding developed and developing countries to act against climate change, a group of more than 800 cities, regions, companies, and investors have signed the Paris Pledge for Action. The pledge acts as a means for subnational players to support the Paris Agreement, according to the secretariat for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“We welcome the adoption of a new, universal climate agreement at COP21 in Paris, which is a critical step on the path to solving climate change. We pledge our support to ensuring that the level of ambition set by the agreement is met or exceeded,” the pledge says.
The Paris Agreement, adopted in the late hours of Dec. 12, represents years of negotiations, which culminated at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the UNFCCC in Paris. The new agreement aims to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Nearly all of the 195 member states to the UNFCCC have submitted nationally determined contributions (NDCs), public commitments developed on the country level to increase efforts to limit the effects of climate change. These NDCs comprise the bulk of the agreement and will be revisited every five years with the intention to increase their ambition over time. The agreement comes into force in 2020.
“The Paris Pledge for Action is about taking that momentum to the next level in support of nations as they work towards raising ambition up to 2020 and well beyond—it is about building ever more support by non-state actors who are aligning with government policy as never before,” Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC executive secretary, said of the new pledge.
Notable signatories to the pledge include the states of New York, Oregon, Vermont, California, and Minnesota; the cities of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Madrid, and Hong Kong; several companies, including AT&T, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Samsung, and Microsoft; and trade organizations including the International Chamber of Commerce.
The signatories agree to take “concrete steps now, and without waiting for the entry into force of the agreement in 2020, both individually and cooperatively, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level and build resilience against those changes already occurring.”
