175 Parties Sign Paris Agreement, 15 Ratify Agreement on Earth Day

During the High-Level Signature Ceremony for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change held at the UN Headquarters in New York, US, on 22 April 2016, 175 Parties to the UNFCCC signed the Paris Agreement (174 countries and the EU), the largest ever number of first-day signatures to an international agreement.

Of the 175 Parties that participated in the ceremony, 15 States deposited instruments of ratification. The signature ceremony was preceded, on 21 April, by the High-Level Thematic Debate on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which highlighted the interlinkages among the actions necessary to address climate change and foster sustainable development, and a briefing on forest conservation and restoration that discussed the implications of the formal signing of the Paris Agreement.

Read the full article here.