The forthcoming UNFCCC COP 22 is described as the COP to resolve the implementation plan for the Agreement. Among the many important issues for the COP are climate finance and engagement of non-governmental organisations, two of the four pillars of the action agenda that delivered the Paris Agreement. A tool that brings the Pillars together is The Climate Finance Roadmap to US$100b[1], resolved by governments from major developed countries[2] and will underpin related discussion at the COP. The Roadmap reports that the governments are committed to the US$100b goal, and also acknowledges the need for private sector finance to achieve the goal. The Roadmap provides for the “use [of] public finance and policy interventions to effectively mobilise private finance” (Page 15). It says that those policies should seek to strategically de-risk investments, help promote investment-friendly business climates, including sound governance and transparency, and remove barriers to competition. The COP President has committed time during the COP to engage with NGOs, which hopefully can effectively harmonise the respective obligations to both public and private sector stakeholders, and thereby deliver the funds necessary for the mitigation and adaptation programmes, and progress toward the 2-degree target.

[1] The Roadmap was made publicly available in October 2016

[2] The following countries were involved in producing this Roadmap: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, European Commission, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

The Paris Agreement brings a new opportunity for Australia to play a proactive role in global efforts to limit climate change. Minimising the risks inflicted by climate change is in our best interests. Further global and national action to reduce emissions is urgently needed. Such action would bring significant benefits to Australia in reducing the risk of severe heat-exacerbated droughts, changes to hydrological regimes and other extreme events such as worse heatwaves, bushfires and mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef."

The Paris honeymoon is over.
 
The Paris Agreement is a legal ribbon around existing practices and actions. Ratification means few legal obligations for participating countries.

For most it simply means putting forward a domestic climate action pledge and submitting a progressively stronger one every five years. Australia has largely already been doing this: we established a pledge last year, created a “Copenhagen” pledge in 2009 and set targets under the Kyoto Protocol in 2005.

Paris entering into force has more symbolic rather than legal strength. The speed of entry into force is mainly indicative of its weak substance.

But what does entry into force mean for those which do not join? Not a great deal for now. In the longer term a lack of ratification would likely lead to exclusion from discussion under the Paris negotiations, as well as an inability to use elements such as market based mechanisms under the agreement. Non-ratifying countries will likely become international pariahs.

However aside from social pressure, the Paris Agreement is extremely weak against countries who choose not to join, or to withdraw. It contains no “non-party” measures to entice participation or punish non-ratifying countries.

Such an arrangement appears to be fine for now, but it could become a fatal flaw if Donald Trump comes to power next week. Paris was designed to be a universal agreement that appeals to the US. It traded quick approval and universal participation for strong substance. A rogue superpower could mark the end of the Paris honeymoon.

The press release announcing that the Paris Agreement has come into force said that humanity would look back on today as “the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster”; this clearly wasn’t written by a scientist.

What the Agreement is doing is reducing the likelihood of disaster by opening a door to a world that will take more concerted and direct action to reduce disaster – disaster that was never inevitable but is still possible.

Australia in its current position is between a rock and a hard place. We will continue to have to deal with the impacts of climate change – that affect us more than most developed countries, while clinging to old technologies and industries that soon will be almost worthless. The economy is showing all the signs of being on the path to transformation – it will be unforgiving to those countries and regions that fail to harness those changes for their own, and the world’s, benefit.

This task is not trivial – the leeway in terms of change for some of our most threatened regions and ecosystems is wafer thin. We have to step through that door, because it will close, and sooner than some of our governments seem to think.

While it's great to see the Paris Agreement coming into force and a new energy around tackling global warming, the real work is only just beginning. Drastic and rapid emissions reductions are needed for us to have a chance of limiting warming to 2°C, let alone the more ambitious 1.5°C target. We know that, around 2°C global warming, the risk of hitting a "tipping point" in the climate system increases. A "tipping point" is where a major change that is hard to predict and could have dire impacts might occur. It is therefore imperative that we do as much as we can to avoid the risk of unexpected climate changes by cutting emissions and limiting global warming.

This is a moment we've been working towards for decades and it deserves celebration. If we do have a future to hang a history on, then the UN is correct that 4th November 2016 could go down as a day the world turned a corner on climate change.

With near universal agreement to act we have at least a slim chance to mitigate the effects if we now move fast and creatively at all levels of society, top-down and bottom-up, within the next 15 years. Agreement is just the first step. 

The UN now has to re-write the rulebook and that takes agreement on measures and then re-allocation of investments on solutions.  Both the developing and developed world need help, the developed world in scaling down their economic reliance on carbon and retrofitting a lot of systems, the developing world in building their economies without falling into the carbon trap.  Both need help.  But both will now be working to a common goal in service of humanity and our children's future. 

Many years ago, as a young graduate, I never thought it would take another 30 years for governments to act on climate change.  I am still angry, and still wary, of those powerful interest groups that have systematically obfuscated, lied and misled people on the veracity of climate change. They are to blame for the wasted years - three decades! - when we could have put in place so much more to mitigate the much higher risks we now face today in terms of surpassing dangerous tipping points beyond which we could have no control.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement represents a significant and progressive shift forward in our global commitment to climate change imperatives.  The National Climate Action plans submitted by each country before and during the Paris conference are insufficient in themselves to keep global warming below 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels however, the implementation of the agreement provides a strong pathway towards achieving this goal longer term and also recognizes the absolute imperative of ensuring that emission reduction is conducted in accordance with the best available science and that climate finance objectives are accelerated.

Probably the most significant implication of the Paris Agreement coming into force is that a Trump Administration in the US would now have to formally withdraw from the agreement, rather than merely withdrawing its ratification.

The Paris Agreement is beyond historic, it is potentially Earth-shaking in its implications.  But in terms of the battle to fight harmful climate change, it is the beginning of the beginning, and many challenges lie ahead.  
 
The world’s nations must realise their enormous mutual interest in keeping climate change to tolerable levels.  I’m reminded of President Obama’s entreaty that we must have 'the audacity to hope'.