TEN years after the Paris Agreement, the global climate report card is brutally honest and painfully incomplete. The system we built — from the UN Framework Convention to Kyoto’s binding targets and Paris’s nationally determined contributions — was meant to turn moral responsibility into collective action. Paris sealed a compact of solidarity: keep warming well below two degrees Celsius, pursue 1.5°C, and require those most responsible to do more. A decade on, that compact is fraying under political expediency, weak finance and geopolitical distraction. The result is not a technical failure but an ethical one, leaving millions in the Global South exposed to floods, heat and hunger.

That history matters because treaties create obligations. The UNFCCC embedded “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Kyoto operationalised it through binding commitments for rich countries. Paris softened legal categories but reaffirmed the same moral claim: those with greater historical responsibility and capacity must lead through deeper emissions cuts and sustained finance. That principle remains the benchmark against which today’s record must be judged.

By that standard, the financial gap is indefensible. UN assessments........

© Dawn