Abstract
Late one Saturday night - 12 December 2015 - on the outskirts of Paris while sitting in the chilly prefabricated buildings of a repurposed airport known as Le Bourget, the world's climate change negotiators watched as a new climate agreement was gavelled into existence. This new, legally binding agreement known as the Paris Agreement, effectively set the world - including South Africa - onto a new, climate-focused development path. Human-induced climate change is acknowledged to be the greatest challenge facing our society and economy. Our excessive and unsustainable use of fossil fuels and destruction of the earth's natural ecosystems have resulted in greenhouse gases (GHGs) - such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) - which enter the atmosphere and trap heat, thereby driving an increase in global average temperatures. Climate change has been classified as a super-wicked problem - in other words, a global environmental problem for which the time available to find a solution is rapidly decreasing and where our irrational discounting of the impacts (that is, spending only small amounts now to combat climate change and ramping up slowly over time) pushes the required responses and associated costs into the future. Ironically, super-wicked problems are caused by those seeking the solution, and finding solutions is further impeded by the fact that the central authority responsible for action is weak or non-existent. However, the Paris Agreement, together with the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in New York in September 2015, offer us the first real hope that we might be able to address climate change in a more timeous, responsible, united, equitable and sustainable way. This article provides a brief background to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) COP21 session in Paris and highlights some of the key elements and implications of the Paris Agreement going forward.
Highlights
The international political response to climate change began when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 9 May 1992
The Convention opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and was entered into force on 21 March 1994
The Kyoto Protocol is a critical part of the international climate change regime as it commits developed countries to internationally binding emission reduction targets
Summary
The international political response to climate change began when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 9 May 1992. The UK Meteorological Office announced that climate change was set to pass the milestone of 1 °C of warming since pre-industrial times (1750) by the end of 2015 – putting the world half way to the stated global policy goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels This target was first proposed by the European Union (EU) in 1996, with support from some environmentalists and scientists, and subsequently included in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord. In the Paris Agreement loss and damage has its own Article which makes permanent the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (established as an interim body at COP19 in Warsaw in 2013) This Article is regarded as an important political statement, putting loss and damage on a par with mitigation and adaptation, and is regarded as a victory for small island countries and other countries highly vulnerable to climate impacts. This is an initiative of 20 countries to accelerate global clean energy innovation, including doubling their current research and development investments in the sector and is coupled with a private sector effort called the ‘Breakthrough Energy Coalition’, in which 28 billionaire investors from 10 countries, led by Bill Gates, will invest private capital in clean energy
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