A pivotal moment has been reached in the global fight against climate change as the world’s largest two greenhouse gas emitters, China and the US, have formally ratified the UN Paris Climate Agreement.
Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping both formally signed and ratified on Saturday 3rd September, ahead of a G20 summit in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Obama said, after signing: “History will judge today’s effort as pivotal.”
The Paris Agreement is a set of commitments designed to represent a cohesive global effort against climate change, conceived at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris late last year. It will officially come into effect, when 55 countries representing 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions have all formally signed and presented their instruments of ratification.
Until last week, 24 countries representing close to 2% of greenhouse gas emissions had formally ratified the agreement, but now with China and the US joining the ranks, progress towards official implementation has massively accelerated. Together, China and the US represent just under 38% of global emissions, and so their ratification brings the total to 26 countries and 39.07% of emissions accounted for.
The CEO of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, Stephanie Pfeifer, reinforced the gravity of this latest development, and urged other countries to take note and follow suit.
She said: “This announcement provides vital momentum for the pace and scale of action required to address the climate challenge.
“We now urge all the other G20 members to follow this lead by the world’s two largest economies, and to take the steps required to double investment in clean energy by 2020.”
Now that the US has ratified, there is some urgency involved in reaching the 55/55 threshold since the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is an outspoken climate sceptic, and it is believed that he is likely to try to pull out of the deal should he get into power. This would be made significantly more difficult if the threshold is met, and the agreement comes into effect, beforehand.
According to the website Climate Analytics, based on various commitments and promises made by the countries involved in the Paris Agreement, by the end of 2016, 58 countries accounting to 59.88% of emissions should have formally ratified.
Ratification from the European Union and its member states would, with 28 countries (including the UK) representing more than 12% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, be enough to tip the balance and trigger the formal coming into effect of the agreement.
The European Commission is currently in talks debating over whether or not the European Council would be able to ratify on behalf of all member states at once, or whether each country should do so individually. The EU as a whole is, itself, party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but each member state has its own responsibilities separate to those held by the supranational body. The balance of responsibilities between the EU as a collective, and the member states as individual nations, is a delicate issue here.
