The international agreement on climate change adopted at COP 21 in Paris in 2015, is known in the climate change space as the Paris Agreement. It is well known and has grown very popular due to the fact that there had been initial attempts to put together a policy document of that sort. Dating back to 1992 where 196 countries had met to look into issues of climate change with the aim of bringing up a policy document to serve as a roadmap to protect the climate systems that would eventually be of great help to the coming generations. The agreement and eminent policy document was to be produced on the basis of cooperation and equity and in accordance with differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (UNFCCC 1992) but it met lots of obstacles.
The delay in putting together an acceptable agreement, Paris Accord 2015, after the UNFCCC framework agreement in 1992 was due mostly to the over-flexibility of conclusions, necessities and abilities to bear costs, the most complex dimensions of justice and equity had not completely been solved, which then hindered the operation of environmental governance in the future (Santos, 2017). Cost bearing for leading the effort was to be catered for by developed countries. This led to other misunderstandings as the United States refused to sign onto the agreement. There had been issues on countries like China, India and Brazil who were considered as developing countries as at the time, but also emitted more relative to some developed countries.
The Paris Agreement (COP21) was able to overcome many of the deadlocks by getting every country to work, aiming at reaching a new agreement. Every country was stimulated to present national commitments. This led to the presentation of 188 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The Paris Accord utilized a multilateral approach as compared to previous documents. It employed a global climate regime applicable to all parties, setting forth provisions on financing, technology and capacity building. It also created a transparent and verifiable vigilance mechanism for mitigation and adaptation actions.
The concern remains and will continue to be the question asked (probably by the more radical skeptics):
Since the Paris Agreement is not binding in terms of emissions and individual financial contributions, how is climate justice properly assured especially when most of the effects of the emissions from the developed countries are rather suffered by the developing countries?
Keywords
Climate Justice: a term used for framing global warming as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature. This is done by relating the effects of climate change to concepts of justice, particularly environmental justice and social justice and by examining issues such as equality, human rights; collective rights, and the historical responsibilities for climate. (Source: UNEP, Wikipedia)
Global Environmental Governance: the sum of organizations, policy instruments, financing mechanisms, rules, procedures and norms that regulate the processes of global environmental protection.(Source: UN SDG)