The Paris Agreement Ten Years Later: Navigating Climate Uncertainty and Tipping Points

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Zoom URL: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/61866964299?pwd=z93TBpHIE0UwydYnrapz1NXfTq8XTt.1
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Abstract:

The climate crisis is an urgent, human‑driven, systemic challenge whose impacts are already unfolding through increasingly frequent and severe extreme events. Although the 2015 Paris Agreement marked a historic advance in global climate governance, implementation has lagged behind what is required to limit warming to well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C by the end of the century. Emerging evidence of accelerating risks, interacting crises and potential tipping points underscores the possibility that climate change could become unmanageable if current trajectories persist. This paper advances three contributions. First, it takes stock of where the world stands and asks why humanity has so far failed to act decisively, highlighting the interaction of cognitive and political factors: a persistent awareness gap, competing policy priorities amid overlapping crises, and the absence of a sufficiently strong constituency for ambitious climate action. Second, it draws insights from three complementary climate‑policy frameworks—the climate policy trilemma, NGFS climate‑policy scenarios, and a precautionary approach—to clarify the trade‑offs and choices facing policymakers. Third, it systematically reviews a set of policy, financial and technological levers that can accelerate a just green transition, while reducing and potentially reversing climate risks. We argue that the climate crisis is evolving into a systemic “triple‑track” problem: (i) escalating and increasingly nonlinear physical risks; (ii) a persistent cognitive and awareness gap; and (iii) weak and unstable political incentives for more ambitious climate actions. We reassess the legacy of the Paris Agreement considering the substantial advances in technology, finance, data and modelling achieved over the past decade.