COP22, moving ahead with implementation of Paris Agreement

The 22^nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22), which wrapped up Friday in Marrakech, was in line with COP21 with the commitment to moving ahead with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, said the proclamation adopted by the participating states.

The 196 State Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) affirmed in the Marrakech Action Proclamation their "highest commitment to combat climate change."

"We call for urgently raising ambition and strengthening cooperation amongst ourselves to close the gap between current emission trajectories and the pathway needed to meet the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement," said the proclamation.

The participating states also welcomed the Paris Agreement and "its rapid entry into force," and reaffirmed their commitment to its "full implementation."

They said that the "extraordinary momentum" on climate change worldwide remains "irreversible" and called to "rapidly build on that momentum."

The developed countries (Parties to the UNFCCC) reiterated their US$100 billion mobilization goal per year by 2020, to help developing countries to have access to clean technology, said the proclamation.

However, at Cop15 in Copenhagen in 2009, similar pledge was made by developed countries, but it was not fulfilled.

For immediate implementation of Paris Agreement

The negotiations and debates during the COP22 focused mainly on the need to implement the Paris Agreement, but many of participating states expressed misgivings that this Agreement would meet the same fate as Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997 and implemented in 2005, because the world's biggest polluters namely Canada, the United States and Russia did not sign it.

In this regard, the participants in the COP22 said the Paris Agreement might not to be implemented as it does not include sanctions against countries that would not implement it.

Speaker of the Council of the Nation (Upper House of Parliament) Abdelkader Bensalah, who represented President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the COP22, hoped that the commitments made in Paris would be fulfilled.