Just 328 days after its adoption at the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement today entered into force. “Humanity will look back on November 4, 2016, as the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster and set off with determination towards a sustainable future,” Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC executive secretary, and Salaheddine Mezouar, president of the upcoming COP22 and Moroccan minister of foreign affairs and cooperation, said Friday in a joint statement.
The agreement, the first of its kind to include climate action contributions from developing and developed nations, was adopted on Dec. 12, 2015, after more than two weeks of intense negotiations by nearly 200 nations. “Paris delivered a gift of hope for every man, woman and child on the planet,” Espinosa and Mezouar said.
The stated intent of the agreement is to keep global temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, with an ambition to limit it to 1.5 degrees.
The accord consists of a legally binding framework under which countries have submitted nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The NDCs are public commitments developed by each government declaring what steps they will take to limit global temperature rise. The targets in the NDCs themselves are not legally binding, in part because an agreement including such measures would require the ratification by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, which is extremely unlikely.
The United States’ inclusion in the deal, due to its status as the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of CO2, was integral. The U.S. NDC commits the nation to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 1990 levels by 2025.
Republicans have fought U.S. inclusion in the agreement, insisting it must be brought before the Senate for ratification. “It is well documented that Paris Agreement drafters sought to produce an agreement that would not trigger involvement of the United States Senate under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,” a group of 13 Senate Republicans wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday. “Whether or not the final Agreement achieved this outcome, there is no disagreement that bypassing the U.S. Congress for convenience has consequences.”
The lawmakers warned that because the agreement hasn’t been ratified by Congress, it is vulnerable to the whims of future administrations. “The UNFCCC’s rush to ratification leaves the final Paris Agreement and any associated actions vulnerable to a host of legal challenges and political shifts from parties who are critical of the Agreement today or may become critical of the Agreement moving forward,” according to Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), David Vitter (R-La.), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Michael Rounds (R-S.D.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Deb Fisher (R-Neb.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
Throughout the process of the agreement’s entry into force, it has exceeded expectations. On April 22, 2016, 175 nations joined at U.N. headquarters in New York, breaking the record for the largest number of parties to sign a treaty on its first day of availability by 56.
After the signing ceremony, nations began the process of domestic ratification. To trigger entry into force, 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions had to submit to the U.N. instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval, or accession. Once the 55/55 threshold was met, the agreement would formally take effect 30 days later. This process was initially expected to be completed no sooner than 2017.
However, the world’s top emitters, the United States and China, quickly pledged to join the agreement by the end of 2016. They made good on their pledge in September, at which time it become clear that entry into force was very likely before the next COP, which begins Monday in Morocco.
In an unprecedented move in early October, the European Parliament voted to allow the European Union to submit its ratification to the United Nations before all of the bloc’s member states had signed off domestically. This allowed EU member states that already completed domestic ratification to join the agreement. The Oct. 5 submissions of the EU, Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Malta, and Portugal pushed the agreement past the 55/55 threshold. As of press time 97 nations have ratified the accord.
Now that the agreement has entered into force, it is time to begin the task of implementation, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday in a prepared statement. “The Paris Climate Change Agreement—ratified in record time by over 90 countries to date—will now be the instrument around which our futures depend. However, even with the commitments made in Paris and encouraging action on the ground, we will not meet our aspiration of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees unless we move faster and at the scale that is needed.”
That call to action was echoed by May Boeve, a spokeswoman with 350 Action, who urged a faster transition to clean energy. “Paris set big goals, now we need to get to work. The goals of the agreement require keeping fossil fuels in the ground and halting new fossil fuel development now,” she said. “The end of the fossil fuel era has begun. Now, we have a massive responsibility to ensure that the transition toward a clean energy economy is just and swift.”
Entry into force locks in the membership of all parties that have formally joined for at least four years. This is of particular interest to the United States, where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has stated an intention to “cancel” the accord. While his hands are tied on U.S. membership, Trump could simply ignore the nation’s pledge, risking significant international backlash.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has supported the Paris Agreement, at times taking a little credit for its adoption. Clinton was involved with the UNFCCC during her time as Secretary of State, though she was no longer with the State Department during COP21 and did not participate in the Paris negotiations.