With the sound of Deepavali crackers and children’s laughter in the background, I watched the videos of world leaders’ speeches at the COP26 happening in Glasgow. Why should an event in a distant land be of interest to me? Or you for that matter! COP26? COP is an acronym for Conference of the Parties, and this was the 26th edition. Parties refer to the countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1994. Under this convention, 197 countries agreed to address the problem of climate change. At the COP meet held every year, the parties report and discuss on the actions they had taken and will take to tackle climate change.
Climate Change and Significance of COP26
There is more buzz about COP26 than previous conferences. Because environmentalists and leaders see this as the most significant event after Paris Agreement, and as the world’s best chance to minimize climate change and its impacts.
There crops up another question. What is Paris Agreement? It is an international legal treaty, which the UNFCCC countries adopted at the COP15 meet at Paris in 2015. Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to take measures to limit global warming to below 2°C—preferably 1.5°C—compared to pre-industrial levels. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pre-industrial is the period before industrial revolution started, and hence taken as 1850–1900.
According to some studies, the world has already warmed by 1.19°C by 2020, compared to the pre-industrial temperature. If it continued at the same rate global warming would be 1.5°C by 2040.
この記事は TerraGreen の December 2021 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は TerraGreen の December 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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