The 2015 climate agreement was adopted in Paris at the United Nations Climate Change Conference known as COP21. The Paris Agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
The agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to climate change by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. It asks countries to submit nationally determined contributions, commonly called NDCs, and to strengthen those plans over time.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which imposed binding emissions targets on certain developed countries, the Paris Agreement includes nearly all countries through nationally determined pledges. It also established a transparency framework and a five-yearly global stocktake to assess collective progress. The agreement does not itself guarantee that national targets will be achieved; implementation depends on domestic policies, finance, technology, and international cooperation.