Page 55 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

at a global level, there could even possibly be a net benefit from climate
change (although we know that positive losses compensate negative losses,
which is not the right way of looking at this). However, the point is that
even when at global level climate change is expected to have low or even sli-
ghtly positive effects, it is still evident that developing counties would be
negatively impacted. This strengthens the message that climate change still
brings strong adverse equity implication, even in case the Paris agreement
goals are met.

This said, the Paris agreement can still be considered a good agreement.
Firstly, because for the first time we have a shared goal to stabilise tempera-
ture levels below 2° C, if not to 1.5°C. The agreement has seen wide partici-
pation from developing countries, which altogether are responsible for 95%
of global emissions, and which have made significant mitigation commit-
ments. Hence, this is a great step ahead compared, for instance, to the Kyoto
Protocol.

Another important aspect is that Paris, for the first time, seriously com-
mits to mobilise financial resources from developed to developing countries,
for a total value of $100 billion per year until 2025 (when this figure might be
renegotiated). To give you an order of magnitude, $100 billion is the interna-
tional official support aid that developed countries transferred to developing
countries in 2010; so, Paris claims that, in principle, this amount should be dou-
bled.

At the same time, the Paris Agreement also has a few shortcomings. As
the Italian Minister of Environment, Mr Galletti, stated “it was the best possi-
ble agreement but that something more has to be done”.

First of all, everything is still on a voluntary basis as it does not impose
any enforcing mechanisms: in spite of the 2°C goal, in fact, the nationally deter-
mined contributions are currently consistent with a higher-temperature scena-
rio, although not an extreme one.

Secondly, the process of periodically revising the agreement itself, which
aims to making it stronger and more stringent, only has a value of moral sua-
sion: it certainly strives to do better but, as it stands, its enforcing part is still
very weak.

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