Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which set legally binding emission reduction targets (as well as penalties for non-compliance) only for industrialized countries, the Paris Agreement requires all countries – rich, poor, developed and developing – to take their share and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, the Paris Agreement provides for greater flexibility: commitments that countries should make are not included, countries can voluntarily set their emissions targets and countries will not be penalized if they do not meet their proposed targets. But what the Paris agreement requires is to monitor, report and reassess, over time, the objectives of individual and collective countries, in order to bring the world closer to the broader objectives of the agreement. And the agreement stipulates that countries must announce their next round of targets every five years, contrary to the Kyoto Protocol, which was aimed at this target but which contained no specific requirements to achieve this goal. There is a lot of misinformation about the Paris agreement, including the idea that it will hurt the U.S. economy. It was a series of unsubstantiated assertions that Trump repeated in his rose garden speech in 2017, arguing that the deal would cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion in jobs by 2040 and $2.7 million by 2025, making us less competitive with China and India. But, as the auditors pointed out, these statistics come from a March 2017 unmasked study that exaggerated the future cost of reducing emissions, underestimated advances in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and was completely unaware of the enormous health and economic costs of climate change itself. States parties are subject to certain legally binding provisions, such as the requirement for developed countries to provide financial assistance to developing countries to enable them to implement the Agreement. The Kyoto Protocol, a pioneering environmental treaty adopted at COP3 in Japan in 1997, is the first time nations have agreed on country-by-country emission reduction targets. The protocol, which only came into force in 2005, set binding emission reduction targets only for industrialized countries, based on the fact that they are responsible for most of the world`s high greenhouse gas emissions.
The United States first signed the agreement, but never ratified it; President George W. Bush argued that the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy because developing countries such as China and India would not be included. In the absence of the participation of these three countries, the effectiveness of the treaty was limited, as its objectives covered only a small fraction of total global emissions. In response to the climate challenge, the agreement recognizes that states have common but differentiated responsibilities, i.e. according to their national capabilities and specificities.