“I see no objections in the room, so I declare the Paris climate agreement adopted. With these words, on Saturday December 12, Laurent Fabius brought to a close the fierce negotiations that had been underway for two weeks at Le Bourget. A long ovation and shouts of joy followed in the hall where the 195 countries that adopted the Paris Agreement were gathered, a historic agreement designed to combat climate change.
This plenary session, which had already been delayed several times, began with a moment of uncertainty when, shortly after arriving in the room, the COP21 president slipped out with Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Laurence Tubiana, the ambassador in charge of climate negotiations.
On his return, Laurent Fabius quickly lifted the suspense by confirming the adoption of the agreement, joined by François Hollande, President of the French Republic. Watch the video.
After two weeks of negotiations and months of hard bargaining, six years after the resounding failure of COP15 in Copenhagen, Laurent Fabius celebrated the culmination of the French Presidency’s work.