On Tuesday 26 May, we held a live web launch of our brand new ‘Guide to the Paris Agreement’. The event was chaired by Kiran Sura, Programme Lead of the Climate Ambition Support Alliance (CASA). A video of the event has now been released and is available to view here: https://youtu.be/TEskN8ZA2Ic

Speakers at the event described how the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement stands as an important commitment to climate action. However, despite this, the Paris Agreement has room for improvement, said Christoph Schwarte of LRI.

“In order to understand the Paris Agreement, it’s not enough to just read the provisions,” he said. “It is a living document and the parties already used the last years to add to the original text and in some places expand, go beyond it.” We try to flag those areas in the Guide and explain how law and policy makers on the ground can integrate the provisions of the Agreement into domestic rules and regulations.

Kishan Kumarsingh, of the Government and Trinidad and Tobago, added: “The guide by ecbi is timely and critical and it will inspire mutual trust and confidence which is something that has waned in the [UNFCCC] process.” “This new understanding will inform the evolving rule-making by giving a better grasp of the articles, what they mean and what they intended, and even more importantly, it [provides an] identification of the subtle nuances between the issues and the articles, which suffer and can be very difficult in the negotiations.” Mr Kumarsingh was Co-Chair in 2013-14 of the UNFCCC negotiating track that ultimately resulted in the Paris Agreement.