# Paris Agreement adopted at COP21

Date: 2015

## The fact

On 12 December 2015, at Le Bourget, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at its twenty-first session (COP21), adopted the Paris Agreement. The act is decision 1/CP.21, “Adoption of the Paris Agreement,” in the COP report addendum FCCC/CP/2015/10/Add.1 (https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/10a01.pdf). The authentic annex is the treaty text. The UNFCCC souvenir edition of that same decision states that the Conference of the Parties adopted the Agreement on 12 December 2015 (https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/parisagreement_publication.pdf). [Laurent Fabius](/people/laurent-fabius), as COP President and French foreign minister, put the decision to the hall and gavelled it. [François Hollande](/people/francois-hollande) hosted. Ban Ki-moon was United Nations Secretary-General. Those three names stay plain text here.

The temperature aim is in Article 2. Parties agreed to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. Article 4 records nationally determined contributions, not a negotiated emissions cap. Article 21 records the entry-into-force rule: the thirtieth day after at least 55 Parties accounting in total for at least an estimated 55 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions have deposited instruments. Signature opened in New York on 22 April 2016. It is not this Fact.

This Fact is the adoption. It is not a first-day emissions print, not a unique GtCO2, and not a later withdrawal or rejoin.

## Context

COP21 sat from 30 November to 13 December 2015 under the Durban Platform (decision 1/CP.17). Copenhagen in 2009 had closed without a comparable treaty. The Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period did not cover the largest emitters as a complete cap. Paris replaced that sequencing with a contribution cycle for all Parties, with common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.

Leaders spoke at the opening, not at the gavel. On 30 November 2015 [Xi Jinping](/people/env-person-xi-jinping) addressed the leaders’ segment; China’s nationally determined contribution, including a stated intent to peak carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, was already on the table. That speech is not the 12 December decision. [Frans Timmermans](/people/env-frans-timmermans) sat as Netherlands Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was not COP President and not the later European Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal; Fit for 55 is a later EU statute wave. [António Guterres](/people/antonio-guterres) was not Secretary-General on 12 December 2015. He took that office on 1 January 2017 and later treated Paris as the UN climate framework.

The decision text also recorded a climate-finance neighbourhood, including the existing developed-country goal of mobilising USD 100 billion a year by 2020, and a five-year stocktake cycle. Those paragraphs are part of 1/CP.21. They are not a measured transfer on 12 December, and they are not a unique dollar size stored here.

The attached driver is [greenhouse-gas emissions intensity](/drivers/greenhouse-gas-emissions-intensity). Paris is the legal architecture that later NDCs, inventories, and global stocktakes sit under. It is not [pace of climate transition](/drivers/pace-of-climate-transition), not [climate-finance availability](/drivers/climate-finance-availability), not [decarbonization policy](/drivers/env-decarbonization-policy), and not [climate crisis](/drivers/climate-crisis). It is not ukraine-war and not [territorial-revisionism](/drivers/territorial-revisionism) (1918–45).

## Evidence and sources

The primary record is FCCC/CP/2015/10/Add.1, decision 1/CP.21 and its annex (https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/10a01.pdf). The UNFCCC documents page for that addendum records the symbol, the 29 January 2016 publication date of the report, and the 12 December 2015 adoption (https://unfccc.int/documents/9097). The UN Treaty Collection depositary record for the Paris Agreement (XXVII-7-d) is the later signature and ratification ledger, not the COP gavel (https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en). The United Nations climate page restates the 12 December 2015 breakthrough and the 4 November 2016 entry into force as separate dates (https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/paris-agreement).

Independent contemporaneous reporting records the same act. Reuters, on 14 December 2015, described the Paris pact as the deal reached after the Copenhagen failure and after leaders had spoken at the opening rather than at the close (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/how-the-world-learned-its-lesson-and-got-a-climate-deal-idUSKBN0TW0PR/). UN News on 12 December 2015 recorded Ban Ki-moon hailing the agreement as a monumental triumph (https://news.un.org/en/story/2015/12/517982). Those wires confirm occurrence, date, venue, and speaker of the gavel. They do not convert Article 2 into a measured 2015 emissions drop.

Accounts conflict on political meaning, not on whether the decision was adopted. Some Parties and later commentators called the text historic. Others called the contributions inadequate on the day. Both characterisations are attributed opinion. The Fact record stores the decision.

## Significance

In Factrail terms this is a recorded multilateral act: a COP decision adopting a treaty. No Person on this page is stored as the sole author of 196 Parties. Xi Jinping is a referenced opening-week head of state whose nationally determined contribution was part of the bargain, not the gavel. Frans Timmermans is a referenced foreign minister of one Party. António Guterres is a referenced later Secretary-General. Ban Ki-moon, Laurent Fabius, and François Hollande remain unresolved names in prose.

The attached driver is greenhouse-gas emissions intensity. The impact path treats adoption as initiating legal architecture that can later weaken intensity if nationally determined contributions, inventories, and stocktakes actually move the emissions tables. That is a hypothesis of stated medium confidence, not a measured bridge on 12 December 2015. A pledge cycle is not a cap. If global intensity later falls, the evidence will be the named inventory tables, not this gavel. If intensity rises, the gavel is not a rebate.

This page does not invent Contribution.size and does not invent a unique GtCO2. Contested 2015 NDC-gap figures stay on UNEP Emissions Gap and UNFCCC synthesis instruments.

## What is established and what is not

Established: on 12 December 2015 COP21 adopted the Paris Agreement by decision 1/CP.21; Article 2 records the well-below-2 °C aim and the 1.5 °C pursuit; contributions are nationally determined; signature opened 22 April 2016; Article 21 states the 55-Party / 55-percent entry-into-force rule; Ban Ki-moon, not António Guterres, was Secretary-General that day.

Not established: that the 2015 nationally determined contributions were collectively consistent with 1.5 °C; that a unique GtCO2 was removed on the day of adoption; that Xi Jinping or Frans Timmermans gavels the decision; that entry into force, the first global stocktake, or any later withdrawal or rejoin is this Fact.

What would change the picture: a later COP decision terminating or replacing 1/CP.21; a depositary record that the Agreement never entered into force (it did, on 4 November 2016, as a separate Fact); a named inventory series that can be causally argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this adoption rather than of fuel prices, COVID-year demand, or later statutes.

## Drivers

- Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Intensity: https://factrail.ai/drivers/greenhouse-gas-emissions-intensity

## Sources

- https://www.reuters.com/article/world/how-the-world-learned-its-lesson-and-got-a-climate-deal-idUSKBN0TW0PR/
- https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/10a01.pdf

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/unfccc-paris-agreement-adopted-2015