The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 195 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on December 12, 2015. It entered into force on November 4, 2016, and currently has 194 Parties. The agreement was created to strengthen the global response to the danger of climate change, effectively superseding the earlier Kyoto Protocol. The core problem it addresses is the need to limit the rise in global surface temperature to "well below 2°C" above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.
The mechanism of the Paris Agreement is a "bottom-up" approach centered on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under this system, each country determines and regularly reports its own climate action plan for mitigation and adaptation. The Agreement works on a five-year cycle, requiring countries to submit updated NDCs that reflect progressively higher ambition. Article 2 outlines the long-term temperature goal and the aim to enhance the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC, adopted in 1992, is the foundational treaty to which the Paris Agreement connects, along with the earlier Kyoto Protocol.
A key provision is the Global Stocktake, which assesses the collective progress toward the long-term goals every five years, with the first evaluation concluding in 2023. The Agreement also includes provisions for climate finance, reaffirming the commitment of developed countries to mobilize $100 billion per year for developing countries for mitigation and adaptation efforts. The operational details for its implementation, known as the Paris Rulebook, were finalized at COP24 in 2018 and COP26 in 2021. The fundamental structure of the Agreement, with its NDC-based, five-year ambition cycle, has remained the same since its adoption.