US to re-enter Paris Agreement: All you need to know about climate accord

President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s order to exit the treaty.

One of the first executive orders Joe Biden signed as US President was to reverse his predecessor Donald Trump’s order to exit the Paris Agreement on climate change. This was one of several decisions taken by Biden on his first day in office.

Here’s a look at some key points on Paris Agreement:

1. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It comes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As of December 2020, all 197 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement and 189 still remain party to it.

2. The agreement was negotiated and adopted by 196 parties in Paris on December 12, 2015 and came into effect on November 4, 2016. India, too, is a party to the agreement, having ratified it on April 22, 2016.

3. The Paris agreement aims to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, limit the increase in average global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius and, if possible, limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

4. Under the agreement, countries have to determine, plan and regularly report on what they are doing to mitigate global warming. However, it is not binding on any country to set specific targets to be achieved by specific dates.

5. On June 1, 2017, then-US President Donald Trump announced that his country would exit the accord and re-enter only on terms that are “fair to the United States.” Trump said his decision to withdraw from the accord under his “America first” policy.

6. The US’ exit from the accord came into effect on November 4, 2020, a day after presidential elections took place. The Trump administration had given a formal notice to exit the agreement exactly a year earlier.

7. Under Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, a party can give notice to leave the accord only three years after the agreement has come into effect in that country. The deal came into effect in the US on November 4, 2016, four days before that year’s presidential polls. The withdrawal from the treaty, meanwhile, comes into effect 12 months after the notice is given.

8. Besides the US, eight other countries are not a party to the agreement, including Iran. The US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and ahead of India.

9. Now that President Biden has signed an executive order to re-join the treaty, the United States will once again become a member of the Paris Agreement in 30 days’ time.

10. The third meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement will take place in Glasgow, Scotland from November 1-12, 2021. It will take place as a part of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.