Optimism and pessimism about the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement has been celebrated as a break with the past – ‘A new beginning’, ‘A new hope’. Its very design has been said to facilitate a solution to the problem of climate change. The lauded design includes an emphasis on ‘transparency’ in state communications, about which the view has been taken that enhanced transparency, even without substantive law placing pressure on states, works to drive up mitigation ambition. Another design advantage, it is said, is that the state targets adopted under the Agreement are nationally determined, not imposed from above. Yet another is the Agreement’s nuanced differentiation, which ensures that all countries will be actively engaged. Early optimism about the Agreement must now be checked against several worrying signs, which include that global emissions, instead of reducing year by year, are still going up; commitments given in Nationally Determined Contributions are selective, imprecise, and qualified; international climate finance is very far from being sufficient; major disruptions in global cooperation since the signing of the Paris Agreement have increased international tensions; and citizen interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions appears to have flattened since 2015, in open societies where this can be measured, despite the increasingly punishing impacts of climate change around the world. What, then, is the correct legal assessment of the Paris Agreement at this point in time? Does it still give reason for ‘hope’?