The recent move of USA to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement is a setback in the consensus achieved on protecting the world environment. In this context, assess the future prospectives on climate control. (2017, 20 Marks)
The Paris Agreement (2015) bought universality by making national pledges voluntary. Its weakness is that the largest historical emitter can leave at little legal cost, and the United States has now done so twice. Whether climate control survives depends on whether the regime rests on a hegemon or on many centres of action.
Why the withdrawal is a setback
- The stated case: Donald J. Trump announced the first exit on 1 June 2017, arguing that Paris cost American jobs for negligible benefit and let China and India off lightly, an old fear of conceding competitive advantage to Southern economies.
- Material loss: the largest cumulative emitter abandoned its pledge and its share of climate finance, widening the gap the South already resented.
- Normative loss: a regime held together by reciprocity and reputation loses credibility when its leading power defects; for a neorealist, cooperation without the hegemon unravels.
Two withdrawals compared
| First (2017–2021) | Second (2025–) | |
|---|---|---|
| Timeline | Announced June 2017; effective 4 November 2020 | Ordered January 2025; effective 27 January 2026 |
| Outcome | Joseph R. Biden rejoined in February 2021 | UNFCCC exit notified, effective February 2027 |
| Context | No party followed; states, cities and firms kept acting | Clean-energy tax rollback, finance cuts, exit from the IPCC |
The first episode is instructive: no other party followed, and the regime held. This supports Robert O. Keohane’s argument in After Hegemony (1984) that institutions, once built, can sustain cooperation after hegemonic commitment declines. American absence also enlarges the role of the EU, China, Brazil and India.
Grounds for optimism
- Polycentric action: Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance fits the bottom-up Paris design; cities, provinces and firms act for local co-benefits without waiting for global reciprocity.
- Economics has shifted: solar, wind and battery costs have collapsed; India’s non-fossil share of installed capacity reached 52.57% by February 2026, five years ahead of its 2030 target.
- Pledges keep coming: China’s 2035 pledge (September 2025) is its first absolute cut, 7–10% below peak; India’s NDC for 2031–35, approved on 25 March 2026, targets a 47% intensity cut and 60% non-fossil capacity.
- Law fills gaps: the ICJ advisory opinion (23 July 2025) treats climate obligations as customary and human-rights duties that bind states outside Paris.
- New coalitions: a voluntary roadmap away from fossil fuels, kept out of the Belém text, moved to a conference in Colombia in April 2026; COP31 at Antalya (November 2026) splits the presidency between Türkiye and Australia.
Grounds for concern
- The numbers: the 2023–25 mean reached about 1.48°C above pre-industrial levels, and full delivery of current pledges still points to roughly 2.3–2.5°C.
- Finance: Baku’s $300 billion a year by 2035 falls far short of need, and Belém (2025) produced no fossil-fuel roadmap in the formal text.
- Energy security: the 2026 war on Iran and the Hormuz disruption pushed importers towards any available supply, coal included, as well as towards domestic renewables.
- Consensus: unanimity gives fossil-fuel exporters an effective veto.
- Equity: in Navroz K. Dubash’s typology, India moved from growth-first defensiveness to progressive realist engagement on the promise of co-benefits and fair burden-sharing; unmet finance erodes that bargain.
Conclusion
The US exit is a setback to ambition and finance, not to the existence of the consensus: no other party has followed. Climate control will depend less on Washington than on Chinese and Indian delivery, the clean-energy cost curve, courts and finance for the South. The likely outcome is partial success: warming held below the old business-as-usual path but above the Paris goal.