The Paris Climate Deal: Origins, Ambitions and Implications
20 September 2016 | Oxford Town Hall
5-6:30 pm | Doors open at 4:30
Tickets £5 (£3 students) | Donated to Low Oxford Carbon Week

“History will remember this day,” said Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, on 12 December 2015, as a record of over 195 states adopted the first universal and legally-binding climate deal pledging to “ [hold] the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”.

Despite the success of the Paris agreement, the road ahead is filled with obstacles. According to Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Paris was “the easy part”, and in the words of Piers Forster, “to achieve the 1.5C target, everything must change.” Each month since the Paris Agreement has set a new global temperature record. June 2016 is now indeed classified as the 14th consecutive month of global record-breaking temperatures, taking us one step closer each month to the 1.5degrees threshold. Following the Paris agreement, world climate experts are thus now faced with two crucial questions, looking into the past How did we arrive at 1.5degrees?, and into the future, Where do we go from here, and how do we get there quickly?

Launching the 1.5 Degrees International Conference the University of Oxford is proud to present a special evening of keynote speeches and discussion from some of the key figures behind the historic Paris Climate Agreement, including Laurence Tubiana, French Ambassador for climate negotiations, Tony de Brum, the force behind the High Ambition Coalition, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, IIASA and IPCC scientist, and Janos Pasztor, UN Assistant Secretary General to Climate Change and Senior Advisor to UN Secretary general Ban Ki-Moon during the negotiations of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The evening will be opened by Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson and will be moderated by the award winning Environment Correspondent at the Financial Times, Pilita Clark.

Please register here: www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=126&prodvarid=1331&searchresults=1&catid=464