What the Paris Agreement Was Built to Do — and Why It Still Matters

The Paris Agreement is now in its second decade — and facing its toughest geopolitical environment yet.

When the accord was adopted in 2015, it was a breakthrough. For the first time, the international community reached a universal agreement to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Over the last ten years, projections of global temperature increases have been revised from more than 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) to less than 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F). Renewable energy, electric vehicles and battery storage are expanding rapidly and becoming increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Progress is real, even if it is uneven.

But the international cooperation that made this progress possible is under growing strain. Military conflicts, deepening trade and economic tensions, and the United States withdrawing from both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement have seriously challenged the cooperative spirit on which the Agreement was built.

At the same time, global emissions continue to rise, climate impacts are intensifying and resources for climate action remain insufficient — raising questions about whether existing institutions can drive change at the pace and scale required. Addressing climate change means transforming every sector of the economy to deliver inclusive growth while decarbonizing and building climate resilience. That depends on governments, businesses, financial institutions and civil society working together to drive country transitions. It also requires collaboration beyond UN climate negotiations, including through international forums such as the G7 and G20, multilateral development banks and regional and bilateral partnerships.

As climate action increasingly demands coordination across a wider range of sectors and institutions, it’s worth reflecting on why the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC remain critical to that effort, especially given today’s geopolitical and climate diplomacy landscape. Understanding what the Paris Agreement can — and cannot — achieve is essential to ensuring it continues to spur international climate action and deliver a more just, equitable, climate-resilient and low-carbon future.