The Paris Agreement (click here) is the new global agreement on climate change. It was adopted by Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 12 December 2015. It commits all countries to take action on climate change.

The Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016 and will take effect from 2020. This means New Zealand’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), will apply from 2021. New Zealand’s NDC is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The purpose of the Paris Agreement is to:

• keep the global average temperature well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C
• strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change
• make sure that financial flows support the development of low-carbon and climate-resilient economies.

The agreement provides a framework for the global response to climate change. Detailed rules, including the rules about the use of markets and the accounting for the land sector, will be negotiated from now until 2020....

Every country on Earth signed onto the Paris Accords. Then the USA under Trump welshed on it's participation to cater to the petroleum industry.

In November 2015, (click here) the New Zealand Government submitted an addendum to our INDC [UNFCCC website].

The addendum clarifies New Zealand's assumptions about accounting for human-generated greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forestry and other land use underpinning the INDC. These assumptions will inform New Zealand's participation in the negotiations on a new global climate change agreement.

The approach described in the addendum builds on the forestry accounting rules under the Kyoto Protocol which New Zealand currently uses to account for forestry emissions and removals. Under this approach, New Zealand would continue to earn credits for afforestation, and be liable for deforestation, while accommodating the ongoing cyclical effects of forest harvest and regrowth that occur as part of normal, sustainable forest management.

New Zealand ratified the Paris Agreement on 4 October 2016 and submitted our NDC to the UNFCCC.

Our NDC is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030....