Law · 2015
The Paris Agreement on climate change
Le Bourget, Paris (France)
On 12 December 2015, at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) at Le Bourget near Paris, 195 countries and the European Union adopted by consensus a treaty to hold the rise in global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Instead of imposing targets, it asks every country to set its own plan for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, a Nationally Determined Contribution, and to submit a stronger one every five years; the agreement was signed in New York on 22 April 2016 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
Why it mattered
Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set binding targets for only a limited set of countries, it brought developing countries into emissions planning as well, and almost every country has joined; but emissions kept rising, the United States withdrew in 2020, rejoined in 2021 and withdrew again in 2026, and 2024 was the hottest year on record, more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
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