December 12, 2015

Paris Agreement

COP21 adopts the Paris Agreement

One modal verb nearly stopped the gavel: Article 4.4 reached the final plenary saying "shall" where earlier drafts had said "should."

12 December 2015, at Le Bourget

The Conference of the Parties adopted the Paris Agreement through decision 1/CP.21 at COP21 in Le Bourget, Paris, on 12 December 2015. COP president and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius brought down the gavel after the parties accepted the final text, and the hall responded with sustained applause.

The adopted agreement set a goal of holding warming well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C.

Shall, should

Immediately before adoption, legal and linguistic experts presented technical corrections — among them changing Article 4.4 from "shall" to "should." Fabius certified the disputed wording as an editorial error.

The UNFCCC documents the change as a technical correction. Reuters reported that it was resolved privately after US negotiators objected.

Adopted is not in force

Adoption completed the Durban Platform negotiating mandate, but it did not make the treaty operative. Signature, ratification and the Article 21 entry-into-force thresholds all still lay ahead; 175 parties signed on the opening day in 2016.

The agreement assigns no central emissions quota to each country. Parties must prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions and pursue domestic measures toward them. The wider agreement also addresses adaptation and finance.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 9 sources 2 audit passes, 2 issues open

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Official UN pages describe the adopting group inconsistently as 195 nations, 195 Parties or all 196 UNFCCC Parties. The variation appears to reflect whether the European Union is counted separately from states; it does not cast doubt on the adoption date.
The “shall” to “should” episode is documented by the UNFCCC as a technical correction. Reuters reported that it was resolved privately after US negotiators objected; claims that this alone almost destroyed the agreement should be framed cautiously.