The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement: Challenge and Possibility of Korea

Abstract

On December 12, 2015, in the Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the participating 195 countries agreed, by consensus, to the Paris Agreement. By the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, post Kyoto regime will substantially be created as a general and multilateral binding structure. The main elements of the Paris Agreement are long-term objective, reviewing targets, transparency requirement, financial support, and “loss and damage.” The long-term objective of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius, to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Compared to pre-industrial times, present temperatures have already increased by about 1 degree Celsius. In order to achieve the goal, governments of the parties promised to stop the rise in heat-trapping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which obliged only the advanced developed countries except for the United States to cut GHG emissions, the Paris Agreement makes general mandatory mechanism including developing countries for the first time. Thus, the global economic order is moving one-step away from a fossil fuel energy economy. The new climate change regime implies uneasy challenge and new possibility of Korea. The Korean government should take a substantial way in line with the new regime.