The Paris Climate Agreement: Is it sufficient to limit climate change?

Abstract

"The Paris Agreement is a monumental triumph for people and our planet" (UN News Centre, 2015). Statements, like this one from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, represent the global excitement shortly after the acceptance of the Paris Agreement and describe the outcome of the COP21 in December 2015 primarily as 'historical'. Twenty years after the UN's first COP (Conference of the Parties), the international community reached "the first universal agreement in the history of climate negotiations" (French Government, 2015). Euphoria about the diplomatic success gave way to scepticism if the deal will actually have real political power to initiate ambitious climate policy worldwide that can prevent dangerous levels of climate change. It will be the next years and decades that show whether the Paris Agreement can create the so far missing global ambition to limit anthropogenic climate change and its capability to reduce risks and vulnerability to the impacts of an already changed climate. In this DIW Roundup we discuss the most important achievements of the negotiations in Paris, and show necessary steps, so that the convention will lead to the historic actions it is meant to create. Doing so, we complement a previous DIW Roundup, where we evaluated expectations prior to the Paris climate talks in December 2015