MADRID, Apr 8 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Council of Ministers has authorized, at the proposal of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture, Food and Environment, Spain’s signature of the Paris Agreement, which it describes as a “historic milestone in the fight against climate change”.
The acting Executive considers that the agreement, which was adopted last December 12, 2015 in the French capital, represents a “success” for the international community and a “unanimous signal” towards a low-carbon development model.
The “global and legally binding” agreement includes 189 national plans to combat climate change and covers 97 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement will enter into force when at least 55 parties (totaling 55% of global emissions) ratify it and will take effect from 2020. The Agreement will be opened for signature at a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 22, with the participation of the European Union and its Member States.
At the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, all countries joined efforts to initiate a new low-carbon model that is resilient to the impacts of climate change.
The text includes a preamble and 29 articles that aim to prevent the increase in the average global temperature of the planet from exceeding 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, and also seeks to achieve additional efforts to ensure that global warming does not exceed 1.5ºC.
It also recognizes the importance of increasing the intensity of the commitments with increasingly ambitious objectives, for which it establishes a review cycle every five years of the degree of compliance of all national measures implemented to achieve the 2ºC objective.
Thus, countries will have to prepare, communicate and maintain their nationally determined contributions to combat climate change and will have to adopt domestic mitigation and adaptation measures in order to achieve the objectives of these contributions.
For the incumbent government, another “important” aspect of the new climate governance is that it revalues the importance of adapting to the adverse effects of climate change, establishing a qualitative objective that consists of increasing the adaptive capacity of all countries.
It also strengthens the framework for global cooperation to enable developing countries most vulnerable to climate change to better cope with the loss and damage resulting from climate change.
Developed countries have committed to mobilize $100 billion annually from 2020 through public and private sources, a commitment that will be revised upward by 2025. For their part, developing countries will be able to participate voluntarily in financing, thereby increasing for the first time the donor base in the fight against climate change.
The agreement provides a common transparency framework for all countries that will provide information on greenhouse gas emissions and removals and on support in the form of financing, technology transfer, among others, whether provided or received.
According to the Government in office, with this agreement Spain expresses its commitment to the fight against climate change, reinforcing the policies promoted to date by this Government, which have made it possible to comply with the Kyoto Protocol and place our country on the path of commitment to the obligations set for the year 2020.
