About 10 years ago, in 2015, the Paris Agreement was adopted with the objective of Strengthen the global response to climate change e reinforce the commitment of countries to deal with and mitigate the impacts of this threat. The agreement was approved by the 195 countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during COP21, held in Paris, France.
At the time, the commitment to maintain the increase in the average global temperature by far less than 2 ° C above pre-industrial levels was defined: specifically, the goal of limiting the increase in temperature to 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels.
“Science has already consolidated that understanding of what is safe and what should be the goal – and countries agree with it in later negotiations – it is to limit this warming to 1.5 ° C. Countries have this goal in common,” explains Stela Herschmann, climate policy expert at the Climate Observatory, CNN.
However, in 2024,: Last year was 1.6 degree warmer than the period before the burning of large -scale fossil fuels. According to the expert, the consequences of an increase higher than this value are both economical and climate.
“In Brazil, for example, agriculture is a very important sector and is based on a stable climate, with rainfall.
Paris Agreement brought results, but at slow steps
In violation of the 1.5 degree limit established by the Paris Agreement revisited the discussion if the treaty is, in fact, working.
“Since the signing of the agreement, the world has advanced a lot [no enfrentamento da crise climática]. In 2015, when it was signed, the forecast was that the world was on a route to be 3.6 ° C warmer [do que o período pré-industrial]. Today, if you take all the policies already placed on paper, we move to a warmer 2 ° C world. If you take a very optimistic view of all the promises made, if we reach 2050 with carbon neutrality – which is what we need and is another goal of the agreement – we will be able to limit the warming to 1.9 ° C, ”says the expert.
In addition, Herschmann considers that the agreement was able to promote in countries the engagement and discussion necessary to promote public policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. However, it ponders: “It is not working at the speed we need, nor will it aggressively in the reduction of greenhouse gas, which we already emit a lot. We need to be aggressive in cutting these emissions, and this is not happening.”
Next decades will be of challenges
For Regiane Nitsch Bressan, professor of international relations at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), the violation of last year represents one of the challenges of the Paris Agreement over the coming decades. “It will be difficult to reverse this increase in global temperature,” he says to CNN.
In its view, one of the factors behind the challenges is in the Paris Agreement itself: each of the signatory countries participates voluntarily and undertake to set their own goals and their own methods to fulfill them. This means that there is no term that forces them to meet these goals or a penalty if they are not achieved.
“This requires a lot of the goodwill of governments and, more than that, the pressure of organized civil society [para que as metas sejam cumpridas]”, Analyzes Bressan.” Therefore, it is very important to think of international events that have non-governmental organizations, social leaders and the interest of the population, because it is these forces that will ensure that their governments are committed to achieving viable solutions and trying to achieve their agreed goals internationally, “he adds.
Another point of challenge is right after the president took office in his second term. For Herschmann, one of the main consequences is the country’s influence from this action.
“[O aquecimento global] It is a problem that no country will be able to solve alone. We need all countries engaged in this fight. So it is a very bad sign that the United States send to the rest of the world, ”says the expert.“ Not to mention that, with the exit of the Paris Agreement, the country also comes out of climate financing, which is the big bottleneck of the transformations we need to see. Many countries depend on these resources that come from rich countries, ”he adds.
For Bressan, the attitude was not a surprise, but may generate pressure from other countries over the United States. “With the new dynamics of trade itself, it is very possible that the world – which is quite changeable – to press the United States to comply with certain measures, since the country historically leads greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.
What to expect from COP30 compared to the Paris Agreement?
It will happen in Belém, Pará, and should represent a negotiation phase transition to effective efforts to cope with climate change. Earlier this month, at an informal meeting at the United Nations General Assembly (UN) in New York, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, president of COP30, said Brazil expects the event to provide an impetus to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
For Bressan, COP30 is an opportunity to think of alternatives for industrial development, including one that actually issues less pollutants. “We hope that the conference will be, really, an innovation that contributes to this urgent theme and that we have representatives and heads of government among forests, understanding the problems of a country like Brazil, which wants to commit to the environmental agenda, but also faces multiple challenges for being an developing country,” he says.
Herschmann adds that COP30 may be a milestone to actually implement the agreements defined by the Signatory Countries of the Treaty. “For example, in COP28, we say that the world would move away from fossil fuels. So how will this be implemented?
