The Paris Agreement
[ch 1: pages 6-7]Every year since 1995 the United Nations (UN) has convened a Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the 2015 COP21 conference in Paris, 160 governments, including the UK, signed up to the so-called Paris Agreement.
This committed countries to take action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases and keep a global temperature rise this century to well below 20C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.50C. It recognised that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat that requires deep reductions in global emissions.
The agreement is far from perfect. It is not binding on governments and the pledges countries have submitted for how they intend to address climate change, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. However, it represents the first time an international agreement reached a global consensus on climate change. As a result of trade union lobbying, it also included a reference to “a Just Transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs” (see pages 8-9).