The Paris Agreement calls for global warming to be limited to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission neutrality to be achieved by the second half of the century. Even before the Agreement came into force, scientific analysis demonstrated the extreme difficulty of achieving these goals by mitigation alone.
Research on the subject in fact highlighted that to achieve GHG neutrality, the emissions caused by human activities would have to be balanced by the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere to compensate for the inadequacy of currently planned mitigation measures. Some existing options for land-based GHG removal include afforestation (establishing new forests) or reforestation (replanting previously forested areas with trees), wetland restoration, soil carbon sequestration, biochar (charcoal used as a soil amendment), terrestrial enhanced weathering (dissolution of minerals to remove CO2 from the atmosphere), and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
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