Countries are increasingly committing to mid-century “net-zero” targets under the Paris Agreement, but achieving the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 deg C to 2 deg C – the threshold to avoid catastrophic climate change – requires cutting greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter or up to half in this decade.

Making sufficient progress in stabilising the climate therefore requires ratcheting up mitigation measures in the near term, and it is a challenging task indeed to get all 195 parties in the Paris Agreement to do so simultaneously.