The 2015 Paris Climate Conference Arguing for the fragile consensus in global multilateral diplomacy Marcin Lewinski and Dim a Mohammed ArgLab, Univers idade Nova de Lisboa The paper applies argumentative discourse analysis to a corpus of official stat ements made by key players (USA, EU, China, Ind ia, etc.) at the opening of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The chief goal is to reveal tl1e underly- ing str t1 c ture of practical arguments and values legitimising the global cli- mate change policy-making. The paper investigates which of the elements of practical arguments were common and which were contested by various players. One ilnportant co nclus io11 is that a complex, multilateral deal such as tl1e 2015 Paris Agree1nent is based on a fragile consensus. This consensus can be precisely described in ter1ns of the key premises of practical argu- ments that various pl ayers shar e (mostly: description of curre nt circum- stances and future goals) an d the pr emises they still discuss but prefer not to prioritise (value hierarchies or precise measures). It thus provides an insight into how a fragile consensus over goals may lead to a multilateral agreement through argt1mentative processes. Keywords: climate change discourse, CO P21, environme11tal argtlillentatio11, Paris Climate Agreement, polylogue, practical argumentation 1. Introduction The 21st annual session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris fro111 30 November to 12 December 2015 was a major event in tl1e global 111an- agement of climate change. After "marathon negotiations;' 196 nations signed an agreement aiming to limit global war ming to "well below 2 °C above pre-indus- trial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pr e-industrial levels:' The deal included dozens of mor e or less detailed measures, https:// doi .org/10.1075/ ja ic.18017.lew Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 (201 9), pp. 65 - 90. issn 2211-4742 e-issn 22 11 -4750 © John Benjamins Publishing Company