The tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement: COP30, failure, and renewal

The tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement: COP30, failure, and renewal The Conference of the Parties in Belém, Brazil, this November (COP30) will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement (COP21 in 2015), but where, Richard Beardsworth asks, do things stand ten years on? A crowning achievement of the Paris Agreement was to make all 196 parties agree to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. In 2018, under scientific pressure to avoid dangerous climate thresholds, the goal was narrowed to 1.5°C.