The Paris Agreement goals are a temperature limit, a cycle of national climate plans and a regular review of collective progress, set out in a legally binding treaty adopted in 2015.
This page is part of the climate change explained guide. It summarizes the treaty text and United Nations descriptions of it, and it does not offer advice.
The temperature goal in the treaty text
The core commitment sits in Article 2 of the agreement. It aims at holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The text adds that doing so would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
The same article names two further aims: increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change in a way that does not threaten food production, and making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. The temperature limit therefore sits alongside adaptation and finance, not instead of them.
The United Nations describes the same set of aims. Its overview says the agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, to review progress periodically and to provide financing to developing countries.
Adoption and legal status
World leaders reached the deal at the climate conference in Paris. According to the UN, the breakthrough came on 12 December 2015, and the page notes that the agreement is a legally binding international treaty that entered into force on 4 November 2016. It also reports that 195 Parties, made up of 194 States plus the European Union, have joined.
The agreement applies to every country rather than only to wealthier ones. The UN states that it includes commitments from all countries to reduce their emissions and work together to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and calls on countries to strengthen their commitments over time. It also provides a pathway for developed nations to assist developing nations in their mitigation and adaptation efforts, which is the basis of the climate finance element of the deal.
The treaty itself acknowledges differences in capability. Its text says it will be implemented to reflect equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances, and that peaking of emissions will take longer for developing country Parties. This flexibility explains why national plans look so different from one another, and why comparing them requires care.
Detailed implementation rules came later. The UN says the operational details were agreed on at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018, in what is colloquially called the Paris Rulebook, and finalized at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. The agreement also invites countries to submit long-term strategies, which, unlike NDCs, are not mandatory.
Legally binding has a specific meaning here. The treaty requires each country to prepare, communicate and maintain its national plan and to pursue domestic measures to meet it, while the content of the plan is decided nationally. That is why the arrangement is often described as a framework built on national choices rather than a system of assigned emission quotas.
National plans and the five-year cycle
The working parts of the agreement are national climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs. The UN explains that NDCs are national climate action plans by each country under the Paris Agreement, and that they are required to be updated every five years with increasingly higher ambition.
The treaty expresses the same ratchet in legal language: each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then current nationally determined contribution and reflect its highest possible ambition. Each new round is meant to go further than the last, in light of national circumstances.
The UN lists the rounds so far: after the original NDCs in 2015, and the second round in 2020/2021, the third round of NDCs are due in 2025 and will detail countries’ intended climate actions through 2035. A country’s plan covers more than emission cuts, since the UN notes that countries also communicate actions they will take to build resilience to the impacts of rising temperatures.
Long-term aims are linked to the same system. The treaty states that Parties aim for global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, followed by rapid reductions so as to achieve a balance between emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the second half of this century. That balance is what is usually called net zero.
How progress is tracked
Two mechanisms are built into the treaty to track progress. The first is the global stocktake, which Article 14 describes. It says the Conference of the Parties shall undertake its first global stocktake in 2023 and every five years thereafter, and that its outcome informs countries in updating and enhancing their actions.
The UN reports that in 2023, the first global stocktake of the world’s efforts under the Paris Agreement concluded at COP28 with a decision on how to accelerate action across all areas by 2030. It included a call on governments to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels in their next round of climate commitments. Those findings are meant to feed directly into the next round of NDCs.
The second mechanism is reporting. Article 13 establishes an enhanced transparency framework for action and support, with built-in flexibility, meant to build mutual trust and confidence. The UN describes the same idea as a framework for transparent monitoring and reporting of countries’ climate goals, so that plans and delivery can be compared over time.
Measurement of the physical climate runs alongside these processes. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is one of the headline indicators, and the page on atmospheric CO2 levels explains how it is monitored. The treaty tracks policy and national action; observation networks track what is happening in the atmosphere.
Where the gap remains
Tracking matters because delivery has lagged behind the goal. The UN is direct about the distance between plans and the goal. Its NDC page says that current commitments fall far short of what is needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, and that more ambitious NDCs are critical. That assessment is the reason the five-year ratchet and the stocktake carry so much weight in the design.
Prices and costs enter the debate too. Governments and researchers weigh the damage avoided by cutting emissions against the cost of cutting them, a question explored in the page on the social cost of carbon. The agreement itself does not set a carbon price.
Organisations that refer to the Paris goals in their own communications should keep claims tied to what the treaty actually says. A business making public climate claims should also check the advertising and consumer rules that apply where it operates.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Paris Agreement legally binding?
The United Nations describes it as a legally binding international treaty. Countries are bound to prepare and communicate their national plans, while the plans’ content is nationally determined.
What is an NDC?
A Nationally Determined Contribution is a country’s national climate action plan under the agreement, updated regularly with increasing ambition.
What is the global stocktake?
It is the periodic review of collective progress towards the agreement’s purpose and long-term goals, described in Article 14 of the treaty.
Does the agreement set a limit for each country?
No. The temperature goal is collective, and each country decides its own contribution within the framework.
