MEPs back UN climate accord

MEPs have given their backing to the UN climate deal agreed in Paris last year.

EU approval for the accord is set to be signed off by the bloc’s 28 governments later this week.

After that, ratification documents can be sent to the United Nations.

“It would spark the transformation to the lower carbon high opportunity climate resilient economy and we need to keep global temperatures increase well below two degrees,” said Ban-Ki Moon, the UN secretary general, in an address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Ratification by the EU would bring the treaty over the threshold for it to enter into force.

Countries that represent at least 55 percent of global emissions need to ratify the accord for that happen.

The US and China, the world’s top two emitters, have already done so.