A crucial United Nations conference in the international fight against climate change has begun in Poland. At stake is whether the nearly 200 participating countries can agree on concrete rules to implement the 2015 Paris agreement by the year-end deadline. The urgency of efforts to combat global warming has been highlighted by a raft of extreme weather that hit many countries, including Japan, this year, which experts warn is being exacerbated by climate change. The latest U.N. report shows that plans by nations in the accord to cut their greenhouse gas emissions are far insufficient to achieve the agreement's goal to contain man-made rises in global temperatures. Japan, as one of the world's major emitters, needs to step up to the plate and upgrade its efforts to reduce its emissions.
As the 24th Conference the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change kicked off this week, sharp divisions remained among the signatories to the 2015 agreement, especially between rich industrialized countries and developing economies, over the rules that put the accord into practice, including those to measure each country's emissions, verify the cuts made and assess how they are living up to their commitments. Agreeing on a common set of rules is essential to ensuring the credibility of the accord as an effective mechanism to fight climate change.
The 2015 Paris agreement set a goal of keeping the rise in global temperature within 2 degrees from pre-industrial levels — preferably closer to 1.5 degrees — in order to avert catastrophic effects from global warming. It was a landmark accord that for the first time brought both advanced and developing nations together in the effort to combat climate change, and each signatory putting forth voluntary plans to cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gas emissions. The problem is that the plans so far submitted by the countries will fail to keep the temperature rises within the goal.