The success of the climate change agreement anticipated to emerge from the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris hinges on whether the world is kept on a path of less than two degrees Celsius of warming, senior climate official Janos Pasztor told UN News Centre yesterday.

“Our expectation is that there will be a good agreement signed,” Pasztor told UN News Service ahead of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s meeting yesterday in Paris with French President François Hollande, in which the two leaders discussed the state of play in the lead-up to COP21, as well as the next steps necessary to ensure an ambitious international agreement.

…it has to take us to a less than 2-degree global warming path because that is the ultimate test of the whole package that will come out of Paris.

Pasztor told the Service that the international agreement to come out of COP21 must be both comprehensive, and credible: “It…has to have a dimension of solidarity — solidarity with those who are more vulnerable, and those who are less capable of taking action on their own without financial and technological support.”

“It also has to be credible — credible in terms of what we measure of what countries are doing but also credible in terms of what is being proposed such as financial support. And finally, what is perhaps most important, it has to take us to a less than 2-degree global warming path because that is the ultimate test of the whole package that will come out of Paris.”