175 countries sign Paris Climate Agreement

The historic agreement on climate change marked a milestone (on 22, April 2016), with a record 175 countries, including India, signing it.

1. Paris Agreement on climate change was signed by 175 countries

2. World leaders made it clear that more action is needed and it has to be quickly, to fight a relentless rise in global temperatures.

3. Concerns – planet heating up to record levels, sea levels rising and glaciers melting

4. The ceremony was held on Earth Day (April 22, 2016)

5. The world is in a race against time. The era of consumption without consequences is over. Today world countries are signing a new covenant with the future. This covenant must amount to more than promises.

6. Theagreement will come into force once 55 countries representing at least 55 per cent of global emissions formally join it, a process initially expected to take until 2020.

   But following a host of announcements at the signing event, observers now think it could happen later this year.

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• China, the world’s top carbon emitter, announced it would “finalise domestic procedures” to ratify the agreement before the G20 summit in China in September.

• The United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, reiterated its intention to ratify this year, as did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

• Another top emitter, the 28-nation European Union, also said the EU waned to be in the “first wave” of ratifying countries.

• Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, speaking on behalf of the world’s 48 least-developed countries, said all were committed to “to move in one irreversible direction to secure a safer climate”. Even though small emitters, he said they would take the steps required to ratify the agreement “as soon as possible”, a reflection of the wide reach of the agreement.

• Key to success in combating climate change will be to get governments, companies, and people all over the world to work together to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

• Recommitment by world leaders to actually win the “war” against carbon emissions that are making the world hotter every year.

• Those that haven’t indicated they will sign include some of the world’s largest oil producers Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan, according to the World Resources Institute.

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ADDITIONAL Points*

• The Paris Agreement was a major breakthrough in U.N. climate negotiations, which for years were slowed by disputes between rich and poor countries over who should do what.

• Under the agreement, countries set their own targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The targets are not legally binding, but countries must update them every five years.

• Already, states face pressure to do more. Scientific analyses show the initial set of targets that countries pledged before Paris don’t match the agreement’s long-term goal to keep global warming below 2°C (3.6°F), compared with pre-industrial times. Global average temperatures have already climbed by almost 1°C. Last year was thehottest on record.

• The latest analysis by the Climate Interactive research group shows the Paris pledges put the world on track for 3.5°C of warming. A separate analysis by Climate Action Tracker, a European group, projected warming of 2.7°C.