Nations agree on rules to enforce Paris accord

Katowice (Poland), Dec 16 

Nearly 200 nations have agreed to enforce rules on implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. Negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP24, dragged on into the final hours of Saturday, one full day beyond the original deadline, suffering some holdback due to certain objections of Brazil and Turkey.

The talks finally ended with the 133-page Paris rulebook being unanimously adopted in the Polish city of Katowice. The Paris deal will come into force in 2020.

The guidelines, known as Paris rulebook, will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change. COP24 President Michal Kurtyka of Poland said: “All nations can leave Katowice with a sense of pride.” 

The agreed “Katowice Climate Package” is designed to operationalise the climate change regime contained in the Paris Agreement. It will promote international cooperation and encourage greater ambition, it said.

The Paris guidelines will promote trust among nations that all countries are playing their part in addressing the challenge of climate change. The Katowice package includes guidelines that will operationalise the transparency framework. It sets out how countries will provide information about their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that describe their domestic climate actions. This information includes mitigation and adaptation measures as well as details of financial support for climate action in developing countries. — AFP

Delhi expresses reservations 

Equity is specifically mentioned in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement. It is the basic principle of the convention and the Paris Agreement. The entire global stock-take exercise will be lopsided if the process, input, technical assessment and output of global stock-take does not fully address equity. Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Negotiator