COP21 Final Text to be Released Today – 1.5 Celsius Target Limit Adopted

December 12, 2015 – They should have been more dramatic in releasing the text of the agreement by doing it at 12 noon local Paris time on the 12th day of the 12th month of the year. But they didn’t.

What do we know so far about the content which is being released in the six official languages of the United Nations?

1. The 2 Celsius limit has now become the “well below 2 Celsius” limit. The effort now is to try and limit temperatures to no more than a rise of 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is a significant new position for the global community and one that I have argued for on this site in a previous posting. In adopting 1.5 Celsius as an upper limit it puts all signatories to the agreement on an accelerated program to cap greenhouse gas emissions within the next decade and begin the process of rapid reduction.
2. All national greenhouse gas reductions pledges given at or before the conference are defined as Nationally Determined Contributions and the 158 submissions covering 185 countries and 90% of total emissions will now be monitored based on stated objectives. The instrument of that monitoring is internal to each submitter so there is no supra-national organization deemed to be the arbiter although that may change in the near future (see Point 5).
3. All submitters are to come back before 2020 to make new pledges, and to repeat the cycle every 5 years thereafter showing a downward progression in greenhouse gas emissions. The reason is simple. The current submissions are deemed to be inadequate to achieve a 2 Celsius let alone a 1.5 Celsius peak warming. If the nations were only to achieve the current commitments the world would warm up 2.7 Celsius with dangerous ramifications for much of the planet.
4. The Developed World is to fund the Developing World to the tune of $100 billion U.S. per year from public and private sources to help those poorer nations mitigate their risk and adapt to climate change. After 2025 the $100 billion sum will be considered the floor for future contributions.
5. There is agreement to put in place a method of holding nations to account to meet their greenhouse gas reduction pledges. The nature of that body which will be deemed to be technically expert and not political will be in place by 2023 and will report on progress every five years.

The nature of the wording and the devil in the details have yet to be released but the five key points above appear to be part and parcel of what is described as a 31 pager, down from a previous version that ran 89 pages in length.