The experience of the Copenhagen conference benefitted the Paris agreement 2015.

The negotiators
entered the COP-21 with a clearer sense of purpose and determination to enter into an agreement as
the Copenhagen conference was a failure. The French presidency had skilfully reached out to
businessmen, governments and NGO’s and laid the grounds of the meeting.

The Paris conventions was a success mainly because all the parties were aiming for a decentralised,
bottom-up process of voluntary pledges. As a result of the shift away from Kyoto-style top-down
restrictions, large emitters who had previously obstructed progress in the negotiations were now willing
to publicly endorse the new agreement.

In November 2014, the United States and China, the world's two largest producers of greenhouse gases,
struck a bilateral agreement on climate change that foreshadowed their subsequent pledges in the run-
up to the Paris meeting. 24 Other big emitters followed suit, making pledges of their own. No
responsible Great Power wished to be excluded from the newly formed climate agreement.

One of the beneficial effects of this new strategy was the restructuring of the international process,
which enabled the parties to accomplish significant breakthroughs like the inclusion of a more ambitious
temperature target.

Article 2(1)a of the Paris Agreement commits parties to "keeping the increase in global average
temperature to well below 2°C." 25 Only after Pacific island states demanded a 1.5°C objective, a
demand backed by civil society organisations, was an additional clause added affirming the parties'
commitment to "pursue efforts to restrict the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels." Even while 1.5°C remains an aim rather than a prescription, the Paris Agreement goes beyond
the previously agreed 2°C target.