Effectiveness of International Instruments in Combating Climate Change

Abstract Book of the 6th World Conference on Climate Change and Global Warming

Year: 2025

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Effectiveness of International Instruments in Combating Climate Change

Amollo Simba

ABSTRACT:

Climate change has been described as an existential threat to humanity. Given the global interconnectedness, actions in one country can have adverse impacts in the rest of the world. It is the realization that combating climate change requires a global effort that inspired countries to come together to develop international agreements to coordinate climate change mitigation efforts. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was the first major climate change agreement and it set binding targets for developed countries for reducing their carbon emissions. Years later, countries came together and adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement brought together both the developed and the developing countries. Despite the global efforts to limit global warming through the adoption of multilateral agreements, the world is not on track to limit global warming as per the targets set out in the Paris Agreement. The implementation of the international agreements has been met with hurdles which include lack of cooperation from some of the developed countries which are the greatest polluters. This paper seeks to analyse whether the international agreements are achieving their objectives, establish the obstacles to the realization of the climate change mitigation under the climate change agreements and to propose mechanisms that can be used to better the effectiveness of the international climate change agreements.

Keywords: Agreements, Carbon, Change, Climate, Emissions