Study: Paris Agreement has significant impacts on climate policy - future less certain
The focus of international climate policy has moved from the formulation of targets and agreements to practical implementation. The era of implementation and geopolitical changes, including the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, increase the pressures to reform the practices of the UN Climate Conferences.
12 December 2025 marked the tenth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement. Another significant moment in the international climate negotiations took place during the same year as the 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Agreement was held in November. The report drawn up by the Finnish Institute for International Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment assesses the impact of the Paris Agreement in 2015–2025 and analyses the key challenges in its implementation in the future.
“The Paris Agreement has had a significant impact as it has guided the climate policy in the past ten years. The Agreement provides an adequate legal framework for ambitious climate policy but, based on various indicators, the national and international implementation is still insufficient to reach the targets,” says Karoliina Pietarila, Research Fellow at the FIIA and one of the authors of the report.
“From many different perspectives, the state of the international climate policy seems more uncertain than in 2015. For the first time we are in a situation where a party to the Agreement, the United States, has announced its withdrawal from the Agreement, as well as from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in 1992. An official withdrawal could have serious and far-reaching consequences for the international climate policy if the United States does not resume its participation in the Climate Conferences,” Pietarila says.
The report published on Thursday 22 January 2026 discusses the Paris Agreement from many different perspectives, including its implementation, effectiveness of the ambition mechanism, the wider legal context, voluntary actions, and trends in the international policy and climate negotiations. A particular focus is on how the impact of the Agreement on policy guidance can be improved in the coming years.
“Because of the current global situation, the universality and effectiveness of multilateral treaties cannot be considered self-evident in the future. This increases the need to strengthen international cooperation and the credibility of the climate policy,” Pietarila says.
According to the report, the international climate policy has now moved to an era of implementation. This era will be shaped by the emission trends in the large emitting countries, United States’ reactions to climate policy, growing role of the BRICS countries, and changes in the traditional negotiating coalitions. The focus on implementation also sets new requirements for the UN Climate Conferences. Their role and practices should be clarified and their growth curbed in a way that is sustainable.
Inquiries:
Karoliina Pietarila
Postdoctoral Fellow
Finnish Institute for International Affairs
[email protected]
+358 9 432 8833
Marjo Nummelin
Chief Negotiator for Climate Change
tel. +358 295 250 227
[email protected]
The report will be published later in the publication series of the Ministry of the Environment. Read and download the report on the website of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs (only in Finnish): Pariisin sopimus 10 vuotta – mitä on saatu aikaiseksi ja mitä tarvitaan jatkossa? (fiia.fi)
The report is part of the Pariisi 10 vuotta (Ten Years from Paris) project funded by the Ministry of the Environment. The authors of the report are Karoliina Pietarila, Antto Vihma (Research Professor, Finnish Institute for International Affairs) and Kati Kulovesi (Professor, University of Eastern Finland).