Nations agree the rulebook to put the Paris accord into action
A UN summit in Poland hammered out the detailed rules needed to implement the landmark climate agreement.
Nearly 200 nations agreed at a United Nations summit in Poland this December on the detailed rulebook needed to put the Paris climate agreement into practice, a technical but crucial step in turning the landmark 2015 accord's broad goals into concrete action.
The talks, held in the coal-mining city of Katowice, were tasked with resolving the thorny details of how countries would measure, report and verify their emissions, so that pledges made under the Paris accord could be tracked and compared on a common basis. Without such rules, the agreement risked being a set of promises with no way to hold anyone to account.
After tense negotiations that ran past their deadline, delegates reached a deal establishing a largely uniform system of transparency, a significant achievement given the deep divisions between rich and poor nations over responsibility and finance.
The summit fell short in some respects, failing to resolve rules on international carbon markets, which were pushed to future talks, and disappointing those who had hoped the meeting would significantly raise ambition in response to the dire warnings of recent science.
Still, agreeing the rulebook kept the Paris process on track at a time of political headwinds, including the announced withdrawal of the United States. For a complex global agreement that depends on trust and transparency among nations, hammering out the rules of the road was an essential, if unglamorous, foundation for the work ahead.