El acuerdo de París sobre el cambio climático: sus aportaciones al desarrollo progresivo del Derecho internacional y las consecuencias de la retirada de los Estados Unidos

Abstract

This study examines the contribution of the Paris Agreement to the progressive development of international law. The Paris Agreement exemplifies the characteristic features of a sectoral regime and the triumph of flexibility in a legal sector of international law where States have to implement their international obligations to the domestic framework, for which they require flexibility to fulfill their commitments as well as their national circumstances to be taken into account. To this end, the Paris Agreement has distanced itself from the previous approaches that guided the normative development of the Framework Convention on Climate Change: the most rigid, envisaged in the Kyoto Protocol, and the softer, set forth by the Copenhagen Accord. The Paris Agreement develops the Framework Convention by establishing a set of provisions having a different normative intensity. These provisions are mandatory for both developed and developing countries through a mechanism of voluntary commitments (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) that ultimately marks the identity of the Agreement. Finally, the study also assesses the impact that the United States’ withdrawal may have on the Paris Agreement.