After WHO, Trump officially withdraws the US from the Paris Climate Agreement

JAKARTA - The United States on Tuesday officially withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, the main international framework for combating global warming, in accordance with President Donald Trump's declaration a year ago.

The withdrawal by the United States, the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, is likely to deal a further blow to efforts to tackle climate change.

On his first day back in office as president in January last year, Trump directed the United States to withdraw from the 2015 agreement, as he did in November 2020 under his first administration.

The United States rejoined the pact about three months later after Joe Biden took office in 2021.

However, the withdrawal for the second time, which is expected to remain in effect for at least the remaining three years of Trump's current presidency, will make it more difficult for the international community to achieve the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In his nearly hour-long speech to the UN General Assembly in September last year, Trump dismissed the dangers of climate change, calling it "the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the world."

Earlier this month, Trump said the United States plans to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992, which has provided the legal basis for the Paris Agreement.

Trump's withdrawal from climate cooperation and multilateralism will likely mean it will take a considerable amount of time for the United States to rejoin the agreement under a new US administration.

The agreement, which was adopted in 2015 and came into force the following year, has been ratified by almost 200 countries and territories. It is the first global agreement that requires all countries, regardless of their level of development, to set greenhouse gas reduction targets.