Nearly 200 nations adopted the Paris Climate Agreement
On this day · 12 December 2015
On December 12, 2015, 195 Parties struck the first deal binding every nation to fight climate change together.
On December 12, 2015, after two weeks of negotiation at the COP21 summit in Paris, 195 Parties adopted the Paris Agreement — the first time a single accord brought essentially every nation together to confront climate change.
The deal set a shared temperature target: holding the rise in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to cap it at 1.5°C. Rather than imposing identical cuts, it asked each country to set and ratchet up its own pledges over time.
For the first time, a binding agreement brought all nations into a common cause to combat climate change.
The text moved quickly from adoption to law: the agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016, faster than many observers expected. It has since become the central framework of international climate diplomacy, the reference point against which national targets, withdrawals, and re-entries are all measured.
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