The bill on UN climate agreement signed by the President of Poland.

President Andrzej Duda signed the bill empowering the head of state to ratify the UN climate agreement. The agreement obliges countries to limit CO2 emissions and fight climate change and global warming, among other things.

The bill was passed through Sejm and the Senate did not decide on proposing any alterations.

Agreement provisions were negotiated last year in Paris. It should be noted that it touches no only on the reduction of greenhouse gas emission, but also highlights the importance of CO2 absorption by, among other things, forests. The agreement introduces a new formula for the concept of carbon neutrality, which is to be about aiming to balance greenhouse gas emission and absorption, also by forests. The main objective of the UN climate deal is intention to keep the global growth rate of average temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius in comparison with the pre-industrial levels and to continue attempts to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees.

It should be noted that even before the conference in Paris, countries voluntarily declared their obligations to take up actions towards reducing greenhouse gas emission in 2020-2030. European Union made agreements regarding, among other things, limiting CO2 emissions to 40 percent (in comparison with 1990). These objectives regard the plans to limit global rise in temperature to 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The countries that sign the agreement also made arrangements to update their future obligations periodically after each five years, starting from 2023. Declarations regarding common achievement of goals should be the reaction expressing the boldest ambitions, and at the same time continually express respect to diversified abilities of selected countries.

Moreover, the agreement concluded in Paris puts on wealthy countries an obligation to provide financial support aiming to limit the effects of climate change in the developing countries. According to the assumptions, the money for this goal should come from both public as well as private funds. The money will be managed by the so-called Green Climate Fund (GCF), the annual budget of which is to be 100 billion dollars. Poland’s contribution into the common budget will be, until 2020, 8 million of dollars. What is interesting, is the declared intention to modify the present goals and create new requisites as soon as after 2025. The global deal also includes information on adapting to climate change.

The documents were submitted to UN General Secretary, and Climate Coalition officially indicates that the formal criteria have been met, and so the agreement concluded in Paris will enter into force as soon as 4 November 2016. Officially, the agreement was ratified by 73 countries and the EU, responsible for 58.82 % of total global emission.