The Paris Agreement had built high hopes amongst the concerned eco-warrior. But to everyone’s disappointment, it has done nothing, and the situation has worsened over the years. The Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016, thirty days after minimum thresholds of at least 55 parties to the convention, accounting for about 55% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, had ratified it. Today, 188 countries from the original 195 have ratified the Agreement. The proposed action plan had three critical agenda as declared on 12 December 2015-
• Hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C
• Increase the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience • Make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
The worst impact of climatic change is seen recently, increasing drastically compared to the last decade. It is also clear that the entire universe has been wrecked by the catastrophic weather change. The temperature has increased by 1.2 degree Celsius from 1880. We also expected it to rise to 3 degrees Celsius or more at the end of this century. The irregular monsoon and rainfall pattern are the significant side effects of climate change. The alarm to control climatic change was first ticked when the world witnessed Paris with freezing cold. This was a significant evidence of climatic change that affected humanity badly and paved the way for the Paris Agreement for climate change.
The Paris agreement in framed its focus towards the GreenHouse Gas(GHG) reduction targets based on the emission rate of respective countries. This mainly forms the framework for action and foundations for co-operative agreement. But the major GHG emitting countries like the USA were not initially happy with this agreement as they were interested in development but later joined hands with another country. But unfortunately UNEP’s emission gap report 2020 reported that the GHG emission was higher in 2019 than 2016, this increase in emission will proportionally increase the temperature by 2030. It was recorded that the GHG emission was marginally reduced in 2020 because of the pandemic, but it was a temporary reduction.
The primary source of the GHG emission is mainly because of the burning coal, increased use of vehicles and all anthropogenic activities, but the renewable energies are still far away. The countries have now started a “net-zero “challenge. Here the countries were promised to show zero GHG emission in 2050. China was the first to start this. The plan and execution are merely dependent upon the individual emission rate. The fundamental difficulty for a country is not in the planning but in the devoid plan’s execution. This will not show the immediate result, but the ball for climatic change can be kicked to the court with efficient planning and flawless execution and then we can expect the position change by the 5th Paris agreement.