Geography online: Are countries meeting their climate change targets?

Are countries meeting their climate change targets?

Targets for limiting carbon emissions have existed since the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the 2015 Paris Agreement. How well are individual countries meeting their targets and what temperature changes are likely for the planet in coming decades?

At the Paris Agreement (2015), 196 countries committed to reducing their greenhouse emissions so that global temperature would not rise more than 2°C above the pre-industrial global average and preferably no more than 1.5°C. This came into effect in 2016, but to reach such ambitious targets it was clear that higher-income countries (HICs) and those generating most emissions must help lower-income countries (LICs) to do this.

So how well are individual countries doing in setting meaningful targets and taking action to meet them? And are HICs helping less-wealthy countries to meet their targets? Visit the Climate Action Tracker website (www.climateactiontracker.org) and from the menu click ‘Global’, then select ‘The CAT thermometer’. Look for the ‘We are here’ indicator and notice how much average (mean) global temperature has already increased since pre-industrial times.