Today’s signing ceremony for the Paris agreement is a largely ceremonial event, but there are seven reasons the moment actually matters, the Environmental Defense Fund argues in a blog post this week.
* With more representatives of 160 countries on track to attend the ceremony, the Paris deal “is expected to shatter the record for the most countries to formally sign an international agreement in a single day,” writes Alex Hanafi, senior attorney in EDF’s international climate program. The previous record was set by the UN Law of the Sea Convention in 1982. Today’s ceremony “demonstrates the political momentum behind the Agreement’s global plan to tackle climate change.”
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* While some nations will join the agreement on the same day they sign, the ceremony “is not the end of the story” for all the rest, Hanafi writes. Still, signing “sends a strong and early signal of a country’s intention to launch its domestic processes necessary to join the agreement.”
* In its format and substance, the agreement makes it easy for the United States to join early. “Like the vast majority of international agreements that the U.S. joins, the Paris Agreement does not require Senate action. Presidents from Washington onward—including Ronald Reagan, who did it 14 times in his second term—concluded agreements like this as ‘executive agreements,’ based on existing executive authorities,” Hanafi explains. “These executive agreements have the same binding force domestically as any other international treaty or agreement the U.S. joins.”
* It’s becoming more likely the agreement will enter into force ahead of schedule. Language preventing the deal from taking effect before 2020 was dropped from the final, negotiated text. And with the world’s two biggest emitters, the U.S. and China, committed to joining this year, “the record-breaking signing ceremony means that many countries are on the path to joining the agreement soon.”
* Momentum is building for markets to play a central role in hitting the Paris targets. “By affirming a role for carbon markets, the Paris agreement recognizes the realities already on the ground, where emission trading systems are at work in over 50 jurisdictions home to nearly one billion people,” Hanafi writes. “Only by harnessing the ingenuity and creativity of business, entrepreneurs, and innovators will we be able to drive down emissions fast enough and far enough to achieve the reductions that the science demands.”
* Forests are the only sector specifically mentioned in the agreement, underscoring countries’ recognition that “forests are more valuable alive than dead.” Hanafi says many of the countries involved in the signing ceremony are taking steps to protect their forests under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework.
* The Paris agreement “shines a spotlight on the next big climate win the world needs: adoption of a global market-based measure in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).” That process continues, though EDF recently pointed to the 7.8-billion-tonne gap in ICAO’s current emission reduction plan.
