Scope of the Agreement and Decision differentiation The Paris Agreement has been hailed as a global and universal agreement that is applicable to all parties, adopted by 196 Parties with submissions of 189 INDCs. The implementation of the Paris Agreement will remain guided by ‘equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, considering different national circumstances’ (PA Art 2). This means that the Paris Agreement maintains the guiding principle of the Convention, allowing some dynamic interpretation of ‘national circumstances’. The Paris style of differentiation has been widely called ‘self- differentiation’ (e.g. Xxxxx and Pauw 2016) because the Agreement allows their own interpretations by parties about what they are committed to and how they intend to realise these commitments in form of (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs, now NDCs). Even though the Paris Agreement refers to developed and developing countries, it avoids a semi- permanent distinction between groups of Parties such as Annex vs non-Annex parties under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, and enables parties to take up different degrees of responsibilities for actions. The latter is possible because responsibilities for specific actions are differentiated through the specific provisions of the Agreement or Decision. For example, on mitigation, developed countries ‘should continue taking the lead by undertaking on economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets’ whereas developing countries ‘should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts’ by gradually ‘moving over time towards such emission reduction or limitation targets’ under national circumstances (PA Art 4, 4). Similarly, developed countries ‘should continue to take the lead in mobilising climate finance’ (PA Art 9.3). On the other hand, for financial transfer, developed countries ‘shall provide financial resources’ to support developing countries while other countries ‘are encouraged to provide such support voluntarily’ (PA Art 9, 1-2), which implicitly assumes convergence in action among groups of countries over time. Among developing countries, two groups of countries are granted a special status for their vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change. Special circumstances of the LDCs and SIDs are considered in the context of adaptation, finance, capacity-building and transparency (PA Art 7.6; Art 9.4 & 9.9; Art 11.1; and Art 13. 3 respectively).
