Climate target
limit on CO₂, the central policy instrument for emissions reductions
A climate target, climate goal or climate pledge is a measurable long-term commitment for climate policy and energy policy with the aim of limiting the climate change. Researchers within, among others, the UN climate panel have identified probable consequences of global warming for people and nature at different levels of warming. Based on this, politicians in a large number of countries have agreed on temperature targets for warming, which is the basis for scientifically calculated carbon budgets and ways to achieve these targets. This in turn forms the basis for politically decided global and national emission targets for greenhouse gases, targets for fossil-free energy production and efficient energy use, and for the extent of planned measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
At least 164 countries have implemented climate targets in their national climate legislation.
Global climate targets
Global climate targets are goals that a large number of countries have agreed upon, including at United Nations Climate Change conferences (COP). Targets often referred to are:
The Climate Convention – an international environmental treaty adopted at the Rio Conference in Brazil in 1992.
Targets for 2008 to 2012: In the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, 160 countries committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent over the period 2008 to 2012 compared to 1990 levels.
Targets for 2013 to 2020: In the Doha amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, slightly fewer I countries committed to reducing their emissions by at least 18 percent in the period 2013 to 2020 compared to 1990.
Targets for 2030:
105 countries promised deforestation at the COP26 in 2021 to end deforestation to 2030.
The public source identifies “Climate target” as limit on CO₂, the central policy instrument for emissions reductions. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Climate, target and limit.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Climate target”, the useful work is to connect “limit on CO₂, the central policy instrument for emissions reductions” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85759159. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2008, 2012 and 1997.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Climate target” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.