After years of moving at a glacial pace, the Paris Agreement is racing to take effect before the US election ....Why? you ask ...Read on

 

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Efforts to build a new global deal to tackle climate change were for many years criticized for moving at glacial pace. But this week climate negotiators meeting in Morocco find themselves facing an entirely new problem: a deal that, astonishingly, has come into effect more than three years ahead of schedule.
The Paris Agreement on climate change, designed to start in 2020, entered into force on Friday after 96 countries and the European Union - together representing nearly 70 percent of the world’s climate-changing emissions - ratified it eagerly and with haste.
That has been a cause for celebration - and some puzzlement.
“We’re now in an interesting conundrum we never thought we’d find ourselves in: After pushing for decisive and speedy action, we got it, rather too speedily.” said Paula Caballero, global director of the climate program at the Washington-based World Resources Institute.


The immediate challenge for negotiators is that, by law, countries that have ratified the deal must start agreeing to the rules to implement it at the next U.N. climate conference. That meeting starts on Monday in Marrakesh. That has left officials a very short time to iron out a host of technical issues - and only about half the parties that crafted the Paris deal are eligible to participate in the early decision-making.

“Because we’ve jump-started the deal, we now have to find a way for negotiators to discuss the rules while still finding ways for other countries to come in and join,” said Liz Gallagher, a climate diplomacy expert at London-based E3G, a sustainable-development think tank.
But that is "a good problem to have”, she said. “It’s the first time we really feel the urgency in the negotiations is reflected.”
 
SOOO why the rush to ratify the Paris climate agreement?? Ask the guy in the image below.

Trump Effect

The rapid approval of the agreement - one of the fastest in the history of international deal-making – has happened in large part because a growing number of countries feel the urgency of taking swift action to deal with climate change and its worsening impacts, while big climate polluters such as China and the United States have jointly stepped up to push the deal. Climate deal members fear the US may back out.
Many nations have an anxious eye on this week’s U.S. elections, where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to pull his country out of the climate agreement if elected. That threat, in recent months, has spurred a rush to ratify the agreement and ensure it takes force before the U.S. vote.


Under the rules of the Paris Agreement, once it has come into effect, “legally a country cannot withdraw before the next five years are over”, said Sven Harmeling, international climate change policy coordinator.
The quick ratification of the global climate deal, however, will likely require a bit of procedural fancy footwork at the Nov. 7-18 U.N. climate talks. Talks can then continue but no decisions will need to be made until all the countries in the climate deal ratify it.

Temperature Threat

Negotiators in Morocco will be trying to push ahead on a few key points, however, looking at immediate actions that could be taken to cut emissions. They also will dig into how the world will make a promised shift to using virtually no fossil fuels by the second half of the century and how to hold global temperature rise to an ambitious target of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
“It’s now starting to sink in,” Aarnio said. “It means really, really drastic mitigation in all sectors, much faster than anything we’ve seen before.
That effort has had a boost in recent weeks with the passage of an accord to begin limiting the use of hydrofluorocarbons – refrigerants that are major contributors to climate change – and a separate deal to cap increases in aviation emissions by 2020.

From drought-related food scarcity in Malawi and Madagascar, to worsening storms in Vietnam and the Philippines, “what we are seeing this year is more and more difficult for people to prepare for and cope with”, said Mr Harmeling.