What Is the Paris Climate Agreement?

Written By Teacher: Liz Ransom

As a High School Spanish teacher and student newspaper advisor, Liz has taught for over 20 years and has served as World Languages Department Chair and K-6 summer camp activities leader. She has worked in Ohio, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, and Chile.

Students capable of systems thinking, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and cross-cultural understanding will be well-equipped to face the challenges of the future. What better way to learn these skills than by studying the Paris Climate Agreement? Social studies, history, and civics classes can dive deep with this comprehensive article, and then research the progress of each signatory starting with this tracker. But knowing the facts is often not enough to create the momentum needed to solve climate change. In this public speaking lesson, students learn strategies for communicating the urgent goals of the Paris Climate Agreement effectively.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

The Paris Climate Agreement is a treaty that brings all the world’s peoples into a common effort to combat climate change. Negotiated under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, a unit of the United Nations, it is the result of 20 years of international effort. The parties to the Agreement are sovereign states who agree to take actions to meet an ambitious goal: to hold the rise in global temperature “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and to try for 1.5 degrees. The Agreement was reached in December 2015 and was soon ratified by almost all nations. In 2017, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States; however, President Joe Biden reversed this decision, and the United States rejoined the Agreement in 2021.

National Pledges

The main focus of the Paris Agreement is lowering greenhouse gas emissions by a system of pledge and review. Each party commits to declare a plan of climate action—its “nationally determined contribution” or NDC. Each NDC includes a pledge to reduce emissions by a certain amount before a target date, 2030 for most.

The Agreement also requires nations to report regularly on their progress, and it lays out the accounting rules for tracking national emissions. NDCs are updated on a five-year schedule, with each update calling for steeper reductions in emissions. An update of the first NDCs occurred in 2021, with commitments beyond 2030 to be pledged in 2025.The Agreement also covers many other aspects of a global response to the climate threat. For example, it includes provisions to strengthen efforts to adapt to a changing climate, and it sets rules and procedures for international cooperation, where countries that exceed their NDCs can sell the excess reductions to other countries to help meet their pledges.