Kelly Levin's thoughts on the Paris agreement

Editor’s note: We asked 2007 Switzer Fellow Kelly Levin, a senior associate with World Resources Institute’s major emerging economies objective, for her thoughts on the Paris agreement.

I think the agreement has the potential to transform collective action on climate change. Whether the long-term goals of holding warming well below 2 degrees C, or even 1.5 degrees C, are met will depend on how Parties implement their existing commitments and also the extent to which they come forward with greater ambition in the future. At the international level, the work ahead entails the development of guidance on a number of different fronts (e.g. accounting, transparency) to specify how the Paris Agreement will be carried out. And at the national level, countries will turn to implementation, exploring what policies and actions need to be advanced to meet their INDCs, how they will finance such activities, and how to effectively collect relevant data and report progress. Also given the significant emissions gap between where we're headed and emissions pathways consistent with the 2 degrees C and 1.5 degrees C goals, it will be necessary to explore additional action that can be taken in the near term, for example in undercovered sectors or gases.

Additional Resources

Understanding the Paris Agreement’s Long-term Goal to Limit Global Warming, from WRI blog, 

The Climate Path Ahead, op-ed in The New York Times by Andrew Revkin