L’accord de Paris

The recent Paris Agreement is a departure in form and substance from previous climate change accords; it calls for a bottom-up approach to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — a bifurcated approach that legally bound developed countries to reduce their emissions — the Paris accord removes the distinction between developed and developing countries, allocating responsibility, for the most part, to the local level. At Kyoto developed countries were allotted a target to reduce their emissions, but developing countries like China or Mexico (Lebanon too) were given no target and allowed to let their emissions increase at will. Developed countries with emission reduction targets were meant to ratify the Kyoto Protocol into law, but the United States — then the world’s largest emitter — declined to do so. For much of the 2000s, the agreement was suspended and climate change negotiations ground to a halt. Then came