The Paris Agreement – Why America surprised all by announcing a pull out

On June 1, 2017, the global community was taken by surprise when the President of the United States Donald Trump announced that the US would pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.  Mr. Trump in his pursuit of the “America First” strategy said that the Agreement puts the United States at a permanent disadvantage and would “undermine the US economy.”

It has been noted that the Agreement, which has been signed by 195 countries and the European Union, commits countries which are members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to join together to reduce emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The Agreement also commits rich countries to support developing countries to adapt to climate change and also to carry out climate change mitigation actions that are within their capacities and therefore play their part in helping to maintain the global average temperature at below 20 C of where it was before the industrial revolution.

Concern about the intended withdrawal of the US from the Agreement is out of the fact that the country is the second biggest emitter of GHGs after China. President Trump claimed that the Agreement looks like a plot to redistribute wealth from wealthy to poor countries and that is would kill the US coal industry.

This is despite the fact that the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global authority in climate science, has given irrefutable evidence that the climate change currently being observed is the result of human activities. More specifically, the IPCC has indicated that the global warming being experienced today is the result of emission of GHGs, principally through the burning of fossil fuels including petroleum products, natural gas and coal.

The Paris Agreement requires countries to set up targets of GHGs that they will reduce by taking measures to mitigate against climate change. Each country should set its own Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) towards reducing GHGs emission.

One of the criticisms against the Agreement is that these contributions are voluntary. At the same time, whereas rich countries have through the Agreement, committed to helping to contribute towards adaptation efforts by developing countries, they are under no obligation to do so, hence such contributions remain voluntary.

Developing country negotiators have therefore felt that the Paris Agreement is not strong enough because there are no sanctions that could be applied should rich countries fail to meet their GHGs emission targets. It is however encouraging that so many countries, with China and the European Union taking lead, have committed to spare no effort towards combatting climate change and avoid the catastrophic rise of global annual average temperature to above 20 C.

The Green Climate Fund

President Trump’s fear that the Paris Agreement was created to redistribute wealth from rich to poor countries is unfounded. The formal mechanism for funding climate change mitigation and adaptation activities of developing countries by advanced economies is the Green Climate Fund (GCF).
The GCF was set up by the 194 countries who are parties to the UNFCCC in 2010, as part of the Convention’s financial mechanism. Its activities are aligned with the priorities of developing countries through the principle of country ownership. The Fund has established a direct access modality so that national and sub-national organisations can receive funding directly, rather than only via international intermediaries.

The Fund pays particular attention to the needs of societies that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African States.

GCF aims to catalyse a flow of climate finance to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development, driving a paradigm shift in the global response to climate change. By 2014 when it launched it resource mobilisation drive, the GCF had raised the equivalent of US$10.3 billion.

In order to engage and access financing from the GCF and also to exercise ownership, countries appoint a National Designated Authority (NDA) to act as an interface between a country and the GCF. The NDA must approve projects for GCF funding. In Kenya the NDA is the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA).

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