Paris Climate Accord. Social Sciences. Research Paper

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The Paris Agreement
Parties to the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 12th 2015 came together to discuss the best way forward in the journey to combat climate change (UNFCCC). The main aim of the meeting was to speed up the funds and actions required to ensure a sustainable future with a goal to reduce the levels of carbon in the earth. Together, the parties came up with the Paris Climate Accord which was an agreement that would see to it that the set objectives were met in due time. The accord came up with key objectives concerning climate change especially on global temperatures with consideration with the current levels of temperature increase as compared to the records in the pre-industrial period. This paper will be focused on researching the accord, its objectives, achievements, challenges and current developments.
The accord called to actions all countries especially the high contributors of CO2 emissions to contribute to the cause. It formulated the National Determined Contributions; amounts which member countries contribute to the agreement. Moreover, it made conditions in the treaty agreements that all member countries should keep records of all their carbon emissions and report them to the accord. When launched, the program decided on a 5 year progress report intervals where the collective activities towards accomplishment of the objectives are to be assessed and adjustments made where necessary. 55 countries had already signed the treaty in November 2016 when it came to force and it was open for signatures. By 2017 there were a total number of 125 parties registered as indicated by the progress report. The number had increased to more than 180 members in 2019. The original parties included USA, China and India who contribute to the highest greenhouse emissions in the world. However, USA in 2017 under the Trump’s government requested to withdraw from the agreement.
It operates uniquely in a “bottom up” organizational approach with a major focus on the voluntary involvement and contribution of the member countries. Rather than being authoritative, decision making for the accord is consensus based and each goal is delegated to political leaders to pursue. The agreement moreover, identifies that though different countries have varying capabilities, the contribution required to achieve its set targets are similar and no country should be discriminated against making a contribution.
From the articles of the Paris Agreement, parties discussed on the cooperation requirements of each member through the Nationally Determined Contributions and the decision reached was that cooperation was to be voluntary based but following a set of goals (Klein and Higham). First the agreement enabled the parties to pursue support for sustainable development where activities that promote use of resources are to be monitored. The aim of sustainable development is to ensure that usage of the current resources does not undermine the availability of those resources for use by future generations. In other words, the natural resources should be used in a way that ensures the future generations will also access them and survive.
Secondly, the international cooperation aimed at ensuring that they maintain integrity to the environment. Since cooperation involves transfer of reduction efforts, the process should be controlled to ensure that each country is appropriately responsible for its environment. Moreover, each accomplished goal of the parties was to be seen as a platform to raise the ambition and achieve a further accomplishment. To oversee the activities of all parties in the agreement, the Conference of Parties to the Paris Accord was initiated to ensure all activities meet set and standardized requirements.
In order to ensure viability of the agreement, a Technology Executive Committee was established to provide reports for technological needs and necessary adjustments. The committee was aimed to perform demonstration of research and development as well as enhance technological capacities of the accord. With this regard, the Subsidiary Body of Scientific and Technological Advice then recommends necessary procedures which include; the updating of needs assessment and implementing of the results through the provided technical and financial support. Secondly, it identifies the conditions needed to transfer the updated technologies and barriers to the process and finally analyze which of the resulting technologies are ready to be transferred and put into action.
Objectives of the Paris Accord
The first objective of the agreement was to achieve the long term temperature goal which sought to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius just above the pre-industrial levels. The ultimate temperature goal was to go further and limit the rise to 1.5 degrees in the coming years (Rogelj, et al). The proposal was considerate of the impact of temperature rise on the overall climate change, where it was noted that reducing the rise in temperature would come a long way in curbing climate change. The accord requires substantial reports about domestic efforts to its cause.
Secondly, the accord set an objective to enhance the ability of its member countries to have enough food production while at the same time control clima...