The historic importance of the Paris Agreement of 2015 was about joining forces of almost all countries of the world in defending the climate.
After 13 days of coordinating the gruelling negotiations, the then French Foreign Minister, socialist Laurent Fabius, declared that the adopted agreement was „fair, sustainable, dynamic, balanced and taking different interests into account”. It sounded very optimistic, but was is certainly a great success as the leaders of as many as 195 countries signed this very complicated document. And even if two years later Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement, never before had such a large part of humanity become involved in the fight against environmental disaster.
Great compromise
However, by necessity, the Paris Agreement is one big compromise. Small island countries in the Pacific or the Atlantic, such as the Kingdom of Tonga, initially put the matter in an extremely dramatic context: if the average temperature rises by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era, they will simply be flooded by rising ocean levels. On the other hand, however, large producers of fossil fuels such as Saudi Arabia and India did not want to hear of „halting the increase in CO2 emissions”.
Eventually, everyone signed a neat, though not entirely clear, formulation that the goal is to limit climate change „clearly below 2 degrees Celsius” and at the same time „efforts will be continued” to ensure that the temperature does not grow more than by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Since many countries, such as America and Poland, did not want to take on too far-reaching legal obligations, it was agreed that the commitments that 186 countries eventually made would be „voluntary”. At the same time, however, the implementation of the declarations they made would be reviewed every five years, and each country would have to make more far-reaching commitments on this occasion. The first, non-binding discussion on this subject is to take place already at the summit in Katowice.
