Climate Policy after the 2015 Paris Climate Conference

The 2015 Paris Agreement marked a turning point in the global community’s response to climate change. For the first time, almost all the world’s nations put forward specific pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of limiting global warming to 2 ̊C, and ideally 1.5 ̊C. The ten contributions in Climate Policy after the 2015 Paris Climate Conference provide a powerful and scholarly analysis of how this historic achievement came about. Written by longstanding experts in the field, the chapters explore the merits and flaws of the treaty and the implementation challenges that still lie ahead, including inconsistency between the Paris Agreement’s global temperature goals and national pledges; weak provisions on support for developing countries; differing legal interpretations on climate liability; and the potential for trade disputes between more and less ambitious countries. Altogether, these authoritative contributions provide essential reading for anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the Paris Agreement, its political origins, and the prospects for international climate policy going forward. Apart from the addition of an insightful new introduction tracking and analysing developments since 2015, the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Climate Policy.