The U.S. is back in the Paris Agreement; heavy lifting begins

摘要

WHILE ON THE 2020 CAMPAIGN trail, Presidential candidate Joe Biden signaled his intent for the United States to rejoin the Paris Agreement, which the nation formally exited in November 2020. And now that candidate Biden is President Biden, the United States is moving forward on that front. The Paris Agreement by the United Nations Eramework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) requires each of the 197 participating countries to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels-and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The agreement also aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. According to the UNFCC, to reach these ambitious goals, appropriate financial flows, a new technology framework and an enhanced capacity building framework will be put in place, thus supporting action by developing countries as well as the most vulnerable countries involved.