The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016, with the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational target of 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.

At the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022, only a few countries have updated their required annual carbon cutting emission targets for this year, and the United Nations’ Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has described present efforts as so “woefully inadequate” that we are setting the world on track to “catastrophe”. Indeed, current CO₂ emissions are rising at 1- 2% per year rather than going down 5-7% per year. Even under the voluntary “nationally determined contributions” of individual nations, emissions are expected to rise by 2030, in contrast to the nearly 50% reduction needed to keep the temperature rise at 1.5°C. At present emission levels, we are committed to a global temperature increase of 2.8°C by the end of the century.