Climate Targets

Subject – Environment

Context – UN says world likely to miss climate targets despite COVID pause in emissions

Concept –

The pace of climate change has not been slowed by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the world remains behind in its battle to cut carbon emissions, the United Nations said.
The virus-related economic downturn caused only a temporary downturn in CO2 emissions last year and it was not enough to reverse the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said.
Reduction targets are not being met and there is a rising likelihood the world will miss its Paris Agreement target of reducing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the WMO said in its United in Science 2021 Report.
The United in Science 2021 report presents the latest scientific data and findings related to climate change.
Concentrations in the atmosphere of the major greenhouse gases – CO2, methane and nitrous oxide – continued to increase in 2020 and the first half of 2021, the UN said.
The average global temperature for the past five years was among the highest on record, estimated at 1.06C to 1.26C above pre-industrial levels. There is now a 40% chance that average global temperature in one of the next five years will be at least 1.5C warmer than pre-industrial levels, the report said.