In terms of climate change, the Paris Agreement is a legally binding international agreement. The agreement was adopted by 196 Parties at the Paris Climate Conference on 12 December 2015, and it entered into effect on 4 November 2016. According to the plan, the goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as compared to pre-industrial levels.
The Paris Agreement is a landmark in the multilateral climate change process. The reason for this is that a binding agreement brings all nations together for the first time. We can briefly say that the Paris Agreement aims to undertake the burden to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.
Most supportive participant countries which signed the Paris agreement are the ones who emit the biggest amount of greenhouse gasses, but they also pay the lowest cost. So, there is a huge inequality between countries. The USA, Europe, China, and Australia are the biggest free-riders.
Developing countries (except China) are not making more greenhouse gas emissions than developed ones. Let us think about the European Union or the United States. These are the main reasons for climate change in the world. Even in China because a lot of Western companies are establishing factories there. Hiding behind a shadow of protecting developing countries by reducing their greenhouse emission is not a solution, it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
On the other hand, what is the share of contribution of developing countries to the world's welfare? Their pollution may not indicate that the cost-benefit balance is negative. The main reason for developing countries' emission problems may not be about production size, it can be about the lack of regulations.
Figure 1 shows us the famous GDP. We can easily observe that the countries with a big share of GDP cause a lot of climate change problems with their scale of production. Let us imagine Ruanda (a small country in Africa) has decreased its greenhouse emissions by 90%. Does it matter? Even a small city in Turkey is making more greenhouse emissions than the whole country.
It is not the case that all developed countries are increasing welfare more than their emissions, but GDP and emissions seem positively correlated, unfortunately. Some people think that it's ethical and moral. Based on the agreement, there is a certain amount of emission is assigned to each firm, and country. So, based on estimations the amounts are enough to reach goals. Thus, they think that it doesn’t matter where this gas is emitted. Both sides of trade benefit (one side can get the money that can be invested into infrastructure and another country can emit more for achieving its equilibrium) and social welfare can stay constant without experiencing dramatic changes.
