Two weeks of horse-tracking ended in Paris on Saturday with remarkable commitments.

The much-awaited United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris, France, COP 21, has come and gone, with delegates from close to 200 countries taking far-reaching commitments to artenuat climate change. The two-week conference at the Bourget, Paris ended on Saturday December 12, 2015 with a “Paris Agreement.” The deal represents remarkable compromise after years of negotiations during which developing countries wrangled with their developed counterparts and failed to come to agreement on several key points. Observers say the agreement will help define the energy landscape for the rest of the century and signal to markets the beginning of the end of more than 100 years of dependence on fossil fuels for economic growth.

The agreement has a long-term goal of holding global temperature rise “well below” 2°C (3.5°) by 2100. It recognises a maximum temperature rise of below 1.5°C (2.7°F). Climate change scientists say the 2°C target is needed to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. They however hold that this would not be enough to save many of the world’s vulnerable countries which are largely small Pacific Island nations.

The agreement also calls for “global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible” and for their continued reduction in the second half of the century as science allows. This effort, climate change scientists say, is to achieve a possible balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of the century.

Most awaited was the commitment to finance climate change mitigation efforts which met with favourable response. Measures to finance efforts to fight climate change in the developing world had also been key sticking points in negotiations. The Paris Agreement revamps the commitment by developed countries to pay 100 billion US Dollars a year by 2020 to developing countries to support their efforts to fight climate change. Negotiators at the summit also took the commitment to further finance climate change in the future. This notwithstanding, the agreement requires participing countries to assess ther efforts to reduce carbon emissions every five years and expand upon those efforts as they are capable.

The inclusion of both developed and developing countries, including those that rely on revenue from oil and gas production, experts says, demonstrates a unity never seen before on the issue. The Paris Agreement marks the culmination of years of groundwork laid in the aftermath of a failed attempt at achieving a previous global agreement at a 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. Countries settled on a bottom-up , trying to agree on a one-size-fits-all strategy, greatly simplifying the job of negotiations.

Victorine BIY NFOR