The agreement adopted in Paris at 7:28 p.m. local time Saturday doesn’t call itself a treaty, but in every other respect it is one. Four years ago at the Durban climate conference, climate negotiators decided to launch a process “to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.” If the Paris Agreement is to meet the requirements of the Durban Platform, legal scholar and Clinton-era climate-change coordinator at the State Department Daniel Bodansky states that “the Paris Agreement must constitute a treaty within the definition of the Vienna Convention.”

Article Two (a) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties defines a treaty as an “international agreement concluded between states in written form and governed by international law.” Under the principle of pacta sunt servanda (“agreements must be kept”), treaties are binding on the parties and must be performed by them in good faith, Bodansky observes in a recent book. Article 14 of the Paris Agreement establishes a compliance mechanism, and Article 20 duly sets out the process for the depositing of “instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval, or accession.”

Read the article “The Paris Agreement, Like a Treaty, Creates a Ratchet Mechanism Where None Existed Before” on nationalreview.com.