2015 Paris Agreement

Why is in news? Middle East heating nearly twice the global average posing potential threat to people & economies, says a new climate study

The Middle East is heating at nearly twice the global average, threatening potentially devastating impacts on its people and economies, a new climate study says.

Barring swift policy changes, more than 400 million people face extreme heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and sea level rise said the report released ahead of the UN's COP27 climate summit in Egypt later the year 2022.

The study shows that the oil-rich Middle East is on course to becoming one of the world's leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, overtaking the European Union within several years.

The study covers the region stretching from Greece and Egypt in the west through to Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates as well as Iran in the east.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries are due to meet in November, 2022in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to follow up on the 2015 Paris Agreement and to work towards a safer 1.5 degree cap through sweeping emissions cuts.

The Paris Agreement often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015.

It covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France.

The Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goal is to keep the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), recognizing that this would substantially reduce the effects of climate change.

Emissions should be reduced as soon as possible and reach net-zero by the middle of the 21st century.

To stay below 1.5 °C of global warming, emissions need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030. This is an aggregate of each country's nationally determined contributions.

India is a signatory to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As part of it, it has formed the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).