Is the Paris rulebook sufficient for effective implementation of Paris Agreement?

Abstract

Glasgow Climate Conference concluded the negotiation on implementing rules for Paris Agreement and adopted the Glasgow Climate Pact. Based on practices under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement enhanced global climate change governance. Paris Agreement established a system centered around ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) of Parties, with a transparency framework to ensure information flow running the system, meanwhile facilitating implementation by Parties through the mechanism on facilitation and compliance, as well as urging Parties to enhance ambition both at individual level and aggregate level through the mechanism on Global Stocktake. By doing so, it is logical that the system would lead to the achievement of the goal set by Paris Agreement. However, the system still faces significant deficiency, such as lack of information timeliness, intransparency of some necessary information, hypothesis-based but not solution-based decision-making, and lack of effective assurance for developing countries to get finance and technology support. It is concluded that this system is beneficial to long-term climate change policy decision and tracking progress of actions, while for short-term decision-making, more comprehensive consideration is needed than only based on the mechanisms of and outcomes from the system. International society should pay more attention to the progress of implementation, as well as ambition of various support provided to developing countries, than only the ambition of mitigation target numbers.

Keywords

• Global climate governance
• Paris Agreement
• Paris rulebook
• Nationally determined contribution
• Multilateral environmental agreement