Øyvind Ravna,
Professor, Faculty of Law, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, Trosmø, Norway; Editor-in-chief, Arctic Review on Law and Politics
Published: November 2016
©2016 Ø. Ravna. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
Citation: Ø. Ravna. “The Paris Agreement Enters into Force.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2016, p. 205. http://dx.doi.org/10.17585/arctic.v7.584
The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,1 dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance starting in the year 2020. The Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2°C, but above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.
In accordance with Article 21(1) of the Paris Agreement, it shall enter into force on the 30th day after the date on which at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55% of total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval, or accession with the Depositary.
On 5 October 2016, the threshold for entry into force of the Paris Agreement was achieved. The Agreement will enter into force on 4 November 2016. As of 11 October, 76 of 197 Parties to the Convention had ratified it.
At the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik on 6–9 October 2016, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received the Arctic Circle Prize 2016 for his leadership in bringing together world leaders on a climate agreement. In his acceptance speech, the Secretary-General sent a clear message to governments and government leaders that they must do everything in their power to combat climate change.
1. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed 4 June 1992 at the ‘Rio Earth Summit’ entered into force on 21 March 1994. Negotiations on the Paris Agreement took place at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and was adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015. It was opened for signature on 22 April 2016. For more information, see http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php (accessed 11 October 2016).