In the landmark Paris Agreement, adopted at the 2015 United Nations climate change conference (COP21), 196 countries decided that the world must limit global temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels – and to 1.5°C above current levels if possible.
Individual nations were to set national emissions targets with this overall goal in mind but, at the time, none were considered sufficient to realise a Paris Agreement-aligned future. Nonetheless, countries have since kept ramping up their emissions ambitions.
