Several scholars have claimed or implied that the Paris Agreement imposes a collective obligation on states to keep global warming below 2°C, but what is a collective obligation from a legal point of view? The literature that asserts the existence of a collective obligation fails to address this question. In this article I argue two points. Firstly, while a legally binding collective obligation for states is not a theoretical impossibility, the Paris Agreement has not demonstrably created such an obligation; therefore, the collective obligation that appears in the treaty constitutes at most an objective of the Agreement, albeit a crucial one. Secondly, while state observance of the Agreement's apparent collective obligation (but, in fact, paramount objective) is necessary for the success of the treaty, the Agreement does not provide for a process to resolve the global mitigation burden into state-level ambition commitments to ensure that the paramount objective is met. While this is a significant failing of the Agreement, the provisions in the 2018 Paris Rulebook on the global stocktake are sufficiently loose to allow for this mechanism to play a role in the ‘individuation’ of the mitigation burden.

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《巴黎协定》中的集体义务和个人抱负

一些学者声称或暗示《巴黎协定》对各国施加了将全球变暖控制在 2°C 以下的集体义务，但从法律角度来看，什么是集体义务？断言存在集体义务的文献未能解决这个问题。在这篇文章中，我争论了两点。首先，虽然对国家具有法律约束力的集体义务在理论上并非不可能，但《巴黎协定》并未明确规定这样的义务；因此，条约中出现的集体义务至多构成了《协定》的一个目标，尽管是一个至关重要的目标。其次，虽然国家遵守协议的明显集体义务（但实际上是最重要的目标）对于条约的成功是必要的，该协议没有规定将全球减缓负担转化为国家级雄心承诺的流程，以确保实现最重要的目标。虽然这是该协议的一个重大失败，但 2018 年《巴黎规则手册》中关于全球盘点的规定足够宽松，以允许该机制在缓解负担的“个体化”中发挥作用。