Part of: Prelims and GS – II – International relation and GS -III – Climate change
Context U.S. President Joe Biden recently announced the Global Methane Pledge, a U.S.–EU led effort to cut methane emissions by a third by the end of this decade.
The announcement was made at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), hosted virtually by the White House recently, in which leaders from several countries and the EU, as well as UN Secretary General António Guterres and (India’s) Environment Minister participated.
Key takeaways
The pledge will help in rapidly reducing the rate of global warming.
It will also produce a very valuable side benefit, like improving public health and agricultural output.
About Methane
Methane is a greenhouse gas.
It is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming capacity.
Approximately 40% of methane emitted is from natural sources and about 60% comes from human-influenced sources, including livestock farming, rice agriculture, biomass burning and so forth.
Do you know?
26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Will be held in November 2021.
The objective is to review progress since the Paris Agreement (2015) on climate, with some countries making commitments to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The Paris deal seeks to maintain temperature rises to under 2 degrees Celsius (and pursue the goal of limiting rises to below 1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels by getting countries to commit to emission cuts.
