US withdrawal will not mean the death of the Paris climate accord
Andrew Hammond says the 2015 agreement is designed to have a flexible, decentralised framework, which may yet see it offer a firm foundation for climate action that leads to sustainable global development
Yet, Paris is a flexible, resilient agreement that could potentially withstand Trump’s short-sightedness. The reason for this is not just that the deal retains significant support across the world, including much of the Americas, China and the EU. The landmark agreement also boasts an intentionally flexible, “bottom-up” approach – compared to the previous Kyoto Protocol – and this greater decentralisation and suppleness means that US withdrawal will not necessarily be fatal.
How China overtook the US in leading the battle against climate change
The wisdom of this flexible architecture is obvious and represents a breakthrough from the more rigid “top-down” Kyoto climate framework. While Kyoto worked in 1997 for the 37 developed countries and the EU states that signed it, a different approach was needed for the more complex Paris deal in 2015. This one involved more than 170 diverse developing and developed states, which agreed to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Trump’s decision is not wholly surprising, given his previous assertion that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. He also received a letter from more than 20 Republican senators urging him to quit the 2015 agreement.
