The 2 ℃ Global Temperature Target and the Evolution of the Long-TermGoal of Addressing Climate Change-From the United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change to the Paris Agreement

摘要

The Paris Agreement proposed to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 ℃ abovepre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ℃ above pre-industriallevels. It was thus the first international treaty to endow the 2 ℃ global temperature target with legal effect.The qualitative expression of the ultimate objective in Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Conventionon Climate Change （UNFCCC） has now evolved into the numerical temperature rise target in Article 2 of theParis Agreement. Starting with the Second Assessment Report （SAR） of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change （IPCC）, an important task for subsequent assessments has been to provide scientific informa-tion to help determine the quantified long-term goal for UNFCCC negotiation. However, due to involvementin the value judgment within the scope of non-scientific assessment, the IPCC has never scientifically af-firmed the unacceptable extent of global temperature rise. The setting of the long-term goal for addressingclimate change has been a long process, and the 2 ℃ global temperature target is the political consensuson the basis of scientific assessment. This article analyzes the evolution of the long-term global goal foraddressing climate change and its impact on scientific assessment, negotiation processes, and global low-carbon development, from aspects of the origin of the target, the series of assessments carried out by the 1PCCfocusing on Article 2 of the UNFCCC, and the promotion of the global temperature goal at the political level.