The longer it takes for the Paris climate change agreement to come into force, the easier it will be for the next U.S. presidential administration to duck out, according to David Waskow, international climate director for the World Resources Institute. However, that doesn’t mean pulling out would be a good move, he said Tuesday.
The Paris Agreement, the world’s first universal climate agreement, opens for signature April 22 in New York. The agreement won’t take effect until at least 55 parties, representing at least 55 percent of the world’s emissions, sign it and submit domestic instruments of ratification, acceptance, or approval. It has been postulated that these requirements will be met in 2017.
In the U.S., what matters most is when in 2017. If the agreement is not brought into force before the next administration takes office on Jan. 20, the new president could opt out of the agreement with the stroke of pen if so inclined. This is, of course, much more likely if a Republican wins the presidency as the top two remaining candidates in the party have expressed doubt that climate change is real.
Abandoning the agreement would be ill-advised, Waskow said. “Without entry into force certainly there’s less of a hurdle for an administration to withdraw from an agreement that it has already joined, but the political consequences globally would be quite significant and there would quite a strong reaction,” Waskow explained during a press call.
Once the agreement is brought into force, leaving it would be significantly more difficult. “There are then some timelines that come into play in terms of withdrawing from the agreement,” Waskow said. “If a party wants to withdraw, there’s a three-year lag from the time that it became a party that it has to wait and then a one-year period during which the withdrawal would take effect.”
The U.S. has already signaled its intention to sign the agreement at the April 22 ceremony. However, Waskow expressed some doubt that the nation would also submit its instrument of acceptance or approval at the same time. “In the case of the U.S. and this administration, I imagine that at the point that they do decide whether they are going to, in fact, submit that instrument, they will have conducted substantial legal analysis that they will make public about the way in which they are doing so and the legal grounds in which they are doing so,” he said.
