‘Collective’ state obligation to achieve the objective of the Paris Agreement: can it bridge the gap between collective ambition and individual state action?

The success of the Paris Agreement hinges on making national climate policies consistent with the ambitious objective of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2°C. In this chapter, we explore a novel legal perspective on the significance of the Paris Agreement’s collective nature for bridging the gap between its collective ambition and individual state action. We analyse the meaning, legal scope, and consequences of collective obligations for the parties to the Paris Agreement and show the relevance of collective obligations for questions of state responsibility. Furthermore, we consider the legal consequences of the Paris Agreement’s global temperature limit. In the absence of an individuation mechanism, the temperature limit remains at the group level and has no direct effect for individual states. Nevertheless, the Paris Agreement’s framework of cumulative obligations of conduct highlights that each state must contribute its own share to the global and collective response to climate change.