Twelve countries ratified the Paris Agreement during the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, bringing total membership in the accord to 112. The two-week event in Marrakesh, Morocco, ended on Friday.
The newest member nations to the climate change agreement are Australia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Finland, Gambia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Nations representing more than 75 percent of global emissions have now ratified the agreement.
The deal, which puts in place a legal framework under which nations are to pursue domestically determined climate actions, entered into force on Nov. 4, just days before COP22. The early milestone, less than a year after the agreement’s adoption in Paris last December, was applauded at the conference, which also served as the first meeting of the parties to the accord.
Because the Paris Agreement entered into force before completion of a number of draft decisions on its implementation, however, the meeting of the parties was largely ceremonial. The decision of the meeting of the parties to the agreement calls for the “Conference of the Parties to request the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement and the constituted bodies under the Convention to accelerate their work on the work programme … and to forward the outcomes to the Conference of the Parties at its twenty-fourth session (2018) at the latest.”
The decision also calls for the first session of the meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement to reconvene at COP23, which will be hosted by Fiji, but held in Bonn, Germany. At that time, the working group will present an update on its progress on the Paris Agreement rulebook.