US pullout won't sound death knell for Paris climate deal

US President Donald Trump will decide this week whether to maintain US support for the 2015 Paris climate change deal. While the choice is a big one that will either bolster or retard international efforts to tackle global warming, the Paris agreement is a flexible, resilient one that could potentially withstand US withdrawal.

The reason for this is not just that the Paris deal retains significant support across the world, including China and the 28-member European Union (EU). In addition, the landmark agreement intentionally has a flexible, "bottom-up" approach - compared to the previous Kyoto Protocol - and this greater decentralisation and suppleness means that US withdrawal would not necessarily be fatal.

While the wisdom of this flexible architecture appears obvious, it represents a breakthrough from the more rigid "top-down" Kyoto framework. While Kyoto worked in 1997 for the 37 developed countries and the EU states which agreed it, a different way of working was needed for the much more complex Paris deal, which involves more than 170 diverse developing and developed states which agreed to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.