Ten years of the Paris agreement: temperature goal missed, but are climate talks moving?

Ten years after the Paris agreement was signed, its key goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures has been missed. Yet experts say the agreement is still proving a vital moral compass for progress.

The Paris agreement was signed in 2015 and entered into force a year later. Governments have pledged year after year since then to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Yet temperatures for two years have exceeded that threshold.

The UN revealed a few weeks ago that its most optimistic estimate was now for about 1.7 to 1.8C of heating.

Ahead of the 2025 climate summit, in the Amazonian port of Belem in Brazil last year, there was a curious way of conducting negotiations. The Brazilian hosts had taken off the table the issue that most had assumed would be at its heart: concrete plans from each country laying out exactly what they would be doing to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Brazil was insisting, instead, that these plans — the bedrock of the Paris agreement — were the business of national governments and not up for negotiation. 'In that case, it will be a very short Cop,' one seasoned global south negotiator said shortly before, reflecting a widespread unease. 'There is nothing to negotiate.'

Another developing country diplomat said: 'They have decided that there is no appetite for negotiation, with the US out of Paris. Countries won't engage.'

The summit ended with a deal, although few loved it. But, as the faultlines from the Brazilian decision deepen going into this year's summit, it is clear that the Paris agreement, and climate action around the world, has reached an impasse.

And it is not just Cop insiders who are worried. For many outside the vast white air-conditioned conference halls, the question, as this year's summit begins, will be: what is the point?

The charge sheet against Paris is long, with the central issue being the failure to achieve its goal. Beyond that immediate failure, the negotiation processes are endlessly convoluted and cause their own problems. It took more than five years just to negotiate the Paris 'rulebook' under which the treaty is interpreted and put into effect.

The convention that all resolutions must pass by consensus has given bad actors free rein. Donald Trump's allies — in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and some other petrostates — frequently veto measures and obstruct progress.

It took more than 30 years of negotiation since the UN framework convention on climate change was signed in 1992 for fossil fuels even to be addressed directly. This was at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, where countries agreed for the first time to 'transition away from fossil fuels' but failed to set a timeframe or any policies to back up the resolution.

The US, the world's biggest economy and responsible for about one in every eight tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted today, has withdrawn from Paris under President Trump.

Even parts of the developed world which support the process have mostly failed to come up with convincing plans: Australia, co-host of Cop31, has set no end to fossil fuel exports; its fellow co-host Turkey plans to increase its carbon output. The UK is opening a gasfield and mulling a new oilfield, Germany has dropped its electric vehicle sales targets and scrapped a renewable heating law. Meanwhile, most rich countries are reducing their contributions to climate finance for the poor.

Most of all, the slow pace of the Paris timetable might have seemed fine in 2015, when temperatures were rising at 0.2C a decade. Today, the rate of rise is 0.4C a decade and still accelerating.

Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser, now with the American University, said: 'The structures of Cops and Paris are labyrinthine, bureaucratic, and ultimately dispiriting. It may be time to streamline them.'