On the “Primary Temperature Goal” under the Paris Agreement

Yury Rovnov’s comment on the International Court of Justice’s conclusion regarding the “primary temperature goal” of the Paris Agreement has been published in the Chinese Journal of International Law.

The Court’s finding that 1.5°C has become the primary temperature goal under the Paris Agreement and therefore a factor that defines the content of States parties’ obligations is significant in a number of ways. Formally confined to the four corners of the Paris Agreement, it is poised to achieve a much broader reach by setting the universal normative benchmark for legal relations between and among public and private entities in respect of climate change. The finding was made notwithstanding the fact that, by the Court’s own admission, the 1.5°C threshold is about to be crossed, which suggests that the ‘primary temperature goal’ is a priori unattainable. Yury’s essay analyses the Court’s concise reasoning behind the finding and argues that it lacks sufficient textual basis, while the overambitiousness of the formalized 1.5°C target may prove to be an inhibitor, instead of a catalyst, of global mitigation efforts.

 The comment is available at https://academic.oup.com/chinesejil/article-abstract/25/3/jmag021/8766816?redirectedFrom=fulltext