 Highlights of the climate pact entering into force on Nov 4 Paris (AFP) Nov 3, 2016 - On December 12, 2015, 195 countries gathered in the French capital concluded the world's first universal climate treaty, the Paris Agreement, aimed at preventing worst-case-scenario global warming levels. The pact crossed the ratification threshold on October 5 this year, in record time, when the European Union, as a party to the agreement, and seven of its member states officially signed off on it. This rounded off the required participation of 55 parties responsible for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions for the pact to enter into force. These are the key points in the Paris Agreement: - The goal - Nations agreed to hold global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and to strive for 1.5 C (2.7 F). The lower goal was a demand of poor countries and island states at high risk of climate change effects such as sea-level rise and drought. But experts say even 2 C will be a tough task, requiring much deeper cuts to planet-warming emissions from burning coal, oil and gas. Scientists warn that on current rates, we are headed for a 4 C-warmer world, or about 3 C if countries actually meet self-determined targets for cutting carbon. - Getting there - The world will aim for emissions to peak "as soon as possible", with "rapid reductions" thereafter. Countries submitted non-binding carbon-cutting goals to bolster the agreement. There are no binding deadlines or goals as there were in the agreement's predecessor -- the Kyoto Protocol -- whose restrictions applied only to developed nations. By the second half of this century, says the Paris Agreement, there must be a balance between emissions from human activities such as energy production and farming, and the amount that can be captured by carbon-absorbing "sinks" such as forests or storage technology. - Burden-sharing - Developed countries, which have polluted for longer, must take the lead with absolute emissions cuts. Developing nations which still need to burn coal and oil to power growing populations and economies, are encouraged to "continue enhancing" their efforts and "move over time" towards cuts. - Tracking progress - In 2018, and every five years thereafter, countries will take stock of the overall impact of what they are doing to rein in global warming, according to the text. In 2020, countries come up against the first deadline for updating their carbon-curbing pledges. Some set targets for 2025, others for 2030. Both categories will be updated five-yearly. - Finance - Rich countries "shall provide" funding to help developing countries make the costly shift to green energy and shore up their defences against climate change impacts. Donor nations must report every two years on their finance levels -- current and intended. Not included in the agreement itself, but in a non-binding "decision" that accompanies it, reference is made to the $100 billion (90 billion euros) a year that rich countries had pledged to muster by 2020 as "a floor", which means it can only go up. The amount must be updated by 2025. Developed countries, in a report published last month, said they were confident of reaching the 2020 target. Pledges made in 2015 alone would boost public finance (excluding private money) to $67 billion in 2020, they said. Using this cash to "mobilise" private finance, the total could come to between $77 billion and $133 billion.
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Just days after the landmark Paris climate pact comes into force Friday, diplomats from 196 nations gathering in Marrakesh will face intense pressure to translate its planet-saving promise into action.
The agreement "will now be the instrument on which our future depends," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.
That's a daunting responsibility, even if the UN talks are still riding the political momentum that carried the deal -- decades in the making -- across the ratification finish line in record time.
Greenhouse gas emissions -- which are pushing the planet into the red zone of dangerous warming -- continue to climb, putting newly ambitious goals for capping rising temperatures potentially out of reach.
Even if all national carbon-cutting pledges joined to the Paris pact are kept, Earth will heat up some 3.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by century's end, a recipe for climate devastation, according to a UN Environment Programme report released Thursday.
Discussions on how to disburse $100 billion (90 billion euros) a year to poor, climate-vulnerable nations remain contentious, even as a major report estimates that the level of annual investment needed over the next 15 years in developing nations is 20 to 30 times that amount.
And hanging over the whole proceedings is the shadow of climate change denier Donald Trump, whose improbable run at the White House is gathering momentum in the campaign's final days.
"The US presidential election will loom large over the COP," said Liz Gallagher, senior advisor at climate thinktank E3G, using the acronym for the annual Conference of the Parties climate meet.
A Trump victory, most analysts agree, could cripple the Paris deal, which the Republican candidate has said he would "cancel".
A victory by his opponent Hillary Clinton -- a vocal proponent of action on climate change -- would surely trigger a huge, collective sigh of relief on Day Two of the 12-day conference, allowing the 15,000 attendees to get on with business.
- 'The battle is not won' -
After the dramatic breakthrough in Paris last December, diplomats and experts are lowering expectations a year later.
"This is a catalytic COP, not a huge leap forward," said Alden Meyer, a veteran climate analyst with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.
For Laurence Tubiana, France's top climate negotiator for the Paris talks, "what is mainly at stake is setting a date for finishing the rulebook," she told AFP.
Sweeping in scope, the Paris Agreement left more than 100 thorny issues to be worked out in nitty-gritty negotiations, from accounting methods for tracking cuts in CO2 emissions, to transparency in financing, to how to assess compensation for "loss and damages" from climate impacts.
By informal consensus, 2018 is the target for working out those rules.
More broadly, 2018 is the next critical rendezvous in the ongoing talks.
National carbon-cutting pledges that go into effect in 2020 fall seriously short of what is needed to cap global warming under 2.0C (3.6F) compared to pre-industrial era levels, the target set in Paris.
Average global temperatures have risen so far by 1.0C (1.8F) -- enough to lift sea levels, trigger deadly storm surges, and unleash life-disrupting havoc on weather patterns.
"We have to plug that gap," said Tubiana. "The big battle of the next two years is how to get countries to increase their ambition."
"The battle is not won," she added.
- Hottest year on record -
Recent news from climate scientists is not comforting.
After two successive record-breaking years, 2016 is shaping up to be the hottest ever recorded.
And concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are still climbing, having passed a critical -- if symbolic -- threshold of 400 parts per million in 2015.
In two years' time -- armed with a special report from the UN's climate science panel due in August 2018 -- nations will take again take stock of the problem, and their capacity to react.
By then, most big greenhouse gas emitters will have likely presented mid-century strategies for scrubbing carbon from their national economies -- a critical exercise that may avert bad decisions in future.
"We could be investing hundreds of billions of dollars in very expensive gas infrastructure that will get us to our goals for 2025 or 2030, but then will make the more important goals of 2050 impossible," said Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute.
The good news is that renewable energy has surged faster and become cheaper than almost anyone imagined possible only a decade ago, accounting for 23 percent of energy production and attracting nearly $300 billion (260 billion euros) in investment in 2015.
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