DISCUSSION PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD: MILES TO GO SUSHANTA KUMAR MAHAPATRA 1 * and KESHAB CHANDRA RATHA 2 1 Department of Management, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, Kochi, Kerala, India 2 Saraswat Degree Mahavidyalaya (Sambalpur University), Sambalpur, Odisha, India Abstract: The vicious effects of climate change are sweeping the planet along with the creation of a level of emissions that would lock in a future of rising sea levels, intense droughts and food shortages, more destructive storms and floods and other catastrophic effects. With a best hope to face the bad effects of climate change on world security and to drive the world on a low-carbon pathway, a multinational effort of the world leaders is on the process to hammer out a new global pact for reducing the emissions. But the Paris Climate Summit has not served for this purpose because of absence of actionable commitments, discord on sharing of remaining carbon space, disagreement over finance, lack of clarity and sidelining the least developed and vulnerable countries. Delivery on commitments made in Paris, therefore, calls for new systems of governance, new infrastructures, user practices, institutions, policies and cultural meanings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: climate change; Paris summit; developed and developing nations 1 TOOTHLESS DEAL The Paris deal is founded on a voluntary basis without any legally binding caps. The Paris Agreement is a relatively toothless one, which does not bind countries to actual emission limits, and has no mechanisms to impose actions. No sanctions will fall on any country that fails to come up to these intentions. The poor nations want clear promises to increase the aid for them, while the USA and other rich nations favour vaguer wording. Professor James Hansen—credited as being the father of climate change awareness— said that ‘the deal is worthless words’ (Wente, 2015).The final text contains only bland platitudes. There is no necessary connection between the legally binding nature of an international agreement and its effectiveness in producing outcomes (Lake, 2015). The agreement delineates an aim for reducing temperatures to a 2°C above pre-industrial levels, but does *Correspondence to: Sushanta Kumar Mahapatra, Department of Management, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, Kochi Campus, AIMS Ponekkara, Kochi, Kerala, India. E-mail: sushanta.mahapatra@gmail.com Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of International Development J. Int. Dev. (2016) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.3262