2015 Dec. 13 - PARIS 2015 climate change agreement.
Paris 2015 UN Climate Change Conference ended on December 12, with an agreement reached by 195 countries on keeping the global average temperature level ‘well below 2˚C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to limit the temperature increase to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels’.
This agreement signals the world that the era of fossil fuel is coming to an end. This means working towards achieving 100% clean energy, which entails pursuing a goal of zero net emissions towards eliminating greenhouse gas from the atmosphere between about 2050 and 2080. At last, 187countries pledged to make ‘intended nationally determined contributions’ (INDCs). It is yet to be decided who is responsible for what and how much each should pay.
The UNFCC, demands from nations to act ‘in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities’. This makes a separation between the rich countries and the rest. At the conference, the differentiation clause was difficult to uphold because it was difficulty to apply it to the world’s largest and second largest emitters - China and US. At the end of the deliberation, a new deal was made, developed countries pledged the sum of $100 billion yearly to developing nations by 2020.
Much of which will be spent on adapting to climate change rather than attempting to prevent it. This donation will be reconsidered in 2025, and donor countries will have to monitor and supervise the spending.
The agreement also provides for review every five years, this starts from holding a meeting in 2018, to assess the progress made so far, countries will also set new targets in 2020. This exercise will be recurrent every five years. Praising this agreement, President Obama declared, ‘We have shown what’s possible when the world stands as one’.
OWG Outcome Document, July 19.
Below: UN official .pdf and webtext
IN .ppt - 3 Top items per SDG
IN Word - Full workout of .pdf
Dec. 21 - The Warsaw 'COP-19' climate negotiations were a widely acknowledged failure. Full text .pdf
Nov. 23 - U.N. Draft decision COP19 Warsaw ADP
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action recommended the following draft decision for consideration and adoption
by the Conference of the Parties at its nineteenth session:
The Conference of the Parties,
Expressing serious concern that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal
and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to
millennia, as indicated by the findings contained in the contribution of Working Group I to
the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Warning that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat
to human societies, future generations and the planet, that continued emissions of
greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate
system and that limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of
emissions ... Open .pdf 
