Author: Varbina Barkakoti
On 12 December 2015, during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, 195 countries adopted the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on mitigating global warming. The agreement aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while striving to restrict it to 1.5°C. The agreement also sets the long-term objective of achieving net zero by 2050. To realise such an ambitious goal, the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rate must reach its peak before 2025 and then decline rapidly. By 2030, emission rates must be about half of the present rate and…