#AnimatED: Beyond Paris

Thirty-one pages. That is what more than two decades’ worth of diplomacy, haggling, bargaining, debating, and political wrangling has come to in Paris on Saturday evening, December 12.

Finally, the world agreed on what to do to fight climate change. It is the first time all nations – rich and poor, big and small, from both hemispheres – have said “yes” to a set of terms on what to do about it.

The goal can be distilled in one phrase: limit the overall increase in global temperatures to below 2ºC (3.6ºF), compared to the temperatures before the Industrial Revolution kicked in. The answer seems simple: cut our production of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main culprit driving the greenhouse effect, but for the nations involved, it is more than “it’s complicated.”

Despite the cheers and hugs and self-congratulatory messages at the evening plenary session, the Paris Agreement is still a flawed, imperfect document.  

For starters, the 2ºC goal is already a big problem – 1.5ºC, though a harder target to achieve, is what most experts believe to be the safer goal, especially for small, low-lying, and poorer nations. 

The agreement also isn’t closing the debate on climate finance and the issue of “loss and damage.” 

No treaty, no document, no global deal – especially a global deal – is perfect. But for any agreement on a seemingly insurmountable problem, one should have a starting point, and this pact, approved by practically the entire planet, is a good start in the fight for Earth’s survival.

But time is running very, very fast. For the Paris Agreement to be successful, nations must go beyond the text of the agreement and walk the talk. 

“We have to do what science dictates. We must protect the planet that sustains us. For that we need to have all hands on deck,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the hundreds of negotiators, most of them sleepless for at least 3 days straight, near the end of the historic summit. 

He was speaking to diplomats and negotiators, and in extension to world leaders, who sent their top diplomats and climate experts to thresh out the deal in a conference center in the outskirts of Paris. 

But what Ban said could also be applicable to everyone else. The Paris Agreement won’t work without each and every one of us – from businesses, to civil society, and most especially to each and every single human being on this planet.

We’ve demanded action from our leaders, and despite the flaws of the agreement, they listened and somehow came to an agreement. But these negotiators, diplomats, and world leaders are only a fraction of the more than 7 billion humans living on Earth right now. Even if they hold the power over state resources, it will be our collective actions that can truly change the course of human history. 

The 31-page document adopted in a conference center at the outskirts of the French capital isn’t the end of the fight for our planet’s survival. It is just the beginning. – Rappler.com