Syria plans to join the Paris climate accord in order to discredit the US.
A senior official of the war-ravaged West Asian country said a couple of days ago that the move would leave America as the only UN member state not supporting the agreement.
While the US ratified the ‘2015 Paris Agreement’ in 2016, President Donald Trump announced in June that he wanted to pull out, unless the US could get a better deal. Syria was the last UN member state not to have signed the accord after Nicaragua did so in October. Not all signatories have ratified the treaty yet.

Its ascension can also be seen as a kind of geopolitical troll. Since Nicaragua signed onto Paris last month, Syria was the only remaining country left out of the Paris process. Nicaragua gets almost all of its energy from renewable sources and it declined to join the treaty in 2015 because (according to Managua) the accord did not go far enough. If the Trump administration follows through with its threat, the US withdrawal would take effect in November 2020.
Addressing a global climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, Syria’s Deputy Minister of Local Administration and Environment M Wadah Katmawi said that his country would join the Paris deal “as soon as possible”. He also said that Syria would seek foreign aid to meet its commitments under the climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

M Wadah Katmawi

“Nations that are entering the phase of post-war recovery – as my nation has seen a war that was oppressive upon it – should be given the priority in reconstruction and reorganising the environment and climate,” stressed Katmawi. “I would like to affirm the Syrian Arab Republic’s commitment to the Paris climate change accord,” he told a delegation on climate change conference in Germany.
Syria’s ascension to the treaty is the first major news to emerge from this year’s UN climate talks, which are being held in Bonn.

Boundless Ocean of Politics has received this article from Sophie Mangal, the special investigative correspondent, Inside Syria Media Centre.

Sophie Mangal

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Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das