by Meagan Torello<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2017, President Trump made the divisive decision to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Although this move is unsurprising since his 2016 campaign clearly advocated that the threat of climate change was a hoax<\/a>, the decision is nonetheless damaging to the effectiveness of the Agreement itself as well as future climate treaties. The most notable effect will be the huge chunk of U.S. funding missing to meet the $100 billion per year budget<\/a> amassed from developed nations to be attributed to sustainable projects and funding for developing countries. The inability to fund sustainable practices in states who cannot finance the projects themselves will only compound the struggle to build sustainable foundations in developing countries with each subsequent year. Additionally, it is no surprise that the Trump administration was willing and prepared to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement since signatories are not legally bound to the obligations of the Agreement.<\/p>\n The true shock of the United States\u2019 withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement comes from the simple fact that the U.S. was able to withdraw without serious consequence and relative ease. Of course, there will be disastrous environmental, economic, security, and humanitarian fallout from high carbon-emitting states like the U.S. failing to adhere to sustainable practices. However, from the position of the Trump administration, these repercussions will not emerge from withdrawing from an Agreement perceived as a robbery from the United States\u2019 budget. Despite this administration\u2019s failure to see how it is cheating itself in the long-run, what may be more worrying is how the international community did not see this coming.<\/p>\n Nicaragua<\/a> was the sole vocal nations not to laud the Paris Climate Agreement upon its completion in 2016.* Firstly, Nicaraguan negotiators made strong statements against the weak environmental benchmarks for the international community to achieve. This included not surpassing a 2 degrees Celsius global average temperature raise, which for developing nations will be unsustainable due to climate feedback loops<\/a>. Climate feedback loops will ultimately raise temperatures up to 4 degrees Celsius, making life impossible in countries near the equator or for people living below or near sea-level. Nicaragua stood up<\/a> for fellow developing nations such as India, Pakistan, and the nations of the Maghreb and Sahel whose survival cannot sustain a four degree temperature raise, despite these nations\u2019 failure to seriously address these issues themselves. Secondly, Nicaragua rightly pointed out that the world\u2019s currently developed nations bear the bulk of the carbon emissions which created today\u2019s climate threats, and thus should be held responsible through the Agreement. One of Nicaragua\u2019s representatives at the Paris summit, Paul Oquist, stated, \u201c[The idea of] universal responsibility \u2013 [that] everyone is responsible \u2013 is a spin on historical responsibility, because everyone didn\u2019t create this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicaraguan representatives addressed the concern that should have occupied every delegation\u2019s agenda: that large, carbon-emitting states would escape both past and future climate responsibility at the expense of poorer, developing states. As a result of this oversight, the Paris Climate Agreement is a non-binding document which has allowed one of the biggest contributors to climate change to dodge any fiscal and humanitarian responsibility regarding the environment. Leading up to the Agreement\u2019s final draft and release, the political context of at the time should have given adequate warning for the potential fate of the historic document. A wave of right-wing populism in Europe with several of its leaders uninterested in pursuing a global pact against climate change and the United States embroiled in a contentious election cycle with a candidate who vehemently apposed the notion of responsibility to maintain the environment should have been serious indicators that Nicaragua\u2019s position was well-founded.<\/p>\n While these concerns are of high importance, it is also critical to note that the Paris Climate Agreement took several years of tough negotiation and compromise between states and must be recognized as a significant contribution in the move to fight climate change and promote inter-state cooperation for the common good. Despite the United States\u2019 withdrawal from the Agreement, experts say that the Agreement\u2019s framework will still be relatively effective<\/a>, although the decision may complicate future international climate agreements. Since its original dissent, the Nicaraguan government has also since ratified the Paris Climate Agreement but has still refrained from signing.<\/p>\n