Multilateral doubters need to think again after the Paris success

The slow multilateral climate tortoise has finally crossed the finish line. To all the naysayers who had given up on multilateralism, this Paris conference invites them to think again.

Negotiators nut out the detail of the Paris
climate change agreement.

The challenging process of compromise-building among 196 parties may be tortuously slow and frustrating and sometimes fail. But when it works, as it finally has in this case, it can deliver a legitimate and therefore durable agreement with universal buy-in.

When the final text was announced before a packed plenary on Saturday 12 December 2015, both the COP President and the official English translator fought back tears. Exhaustion and emotions were both running high. When the agreement was officially adopted later in the day, at around 7.30pm, the applause was thunderous.

Read the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute story - “The successes, heroes and villains of the Paris deal.”