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Various literatures report on emergence and spread of climate change as the global problem albeit with different orientation (e.g. BBC News 2020; History.com Editors 2020; Wear, 2008). This section presents a highly synthesized summary of climate change in the sustainability context. Early ideas that human can alter global climate can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, where people believed that humans could change temperatures and influence rainfall by chopping down trees, plowing fields or irrigating a desert. However, the theory of the greenhouse effect and the potential of industrial activities to intensify the effect were first identified by Fourier, Tyndale, and Arrhenius in 1827, 1859, and 1896, respectively. Tyndall’s laboratory tests in the late 1860s confirmed that coal gas (containing CO₂, methane and volatile hydrocarbons) is effective at absorbing solar radiation. By the 1890s, the concept of warming the planet was welcomed considering that it may benefit colder regions of the earth. By the 1930s, scientists started to argue on the potential consequences of “global warming”, which continued until the 1960s (Weart 2008). The most famous among those research projects was establishing a CO₂ monitoring station in 1958 at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory. The plot based on data from the observatory, popularly known as “Keeling Curve”, revealed a steady rise in CO₂ levels. The observation at the station, which constitutes the master time series documenting the changing composition of the atmosphere (Keeling 1998), has an iconic status in climate science as evidence of anthropogenic effect on the atmosphere’s chemical composition. Later observations of parallel trends in the atmospheric abundance of the CO₂ isotope and molecular oxygen (O₂) uniquely identified this rise in CO₂ with fossil fuel burning (Le Treut et al., 2007). Though the idea of the greenhouse effect and global warming was emerged in the 1800s, it took nearly a century of research and data, until the late 1950s, to convince the vast majority of the scientific community that human activity could alter our planet’s climate. Table 1.3 depicts a chronology of evolution of international climate negotiations over the years in light of increasing concentration of atmospheric CO₂.

Figure 1.1 A diagrammatic illustration of the historical development of water management paradigms. Shading intensity indicates the degree of dominance of a paradigm relative to others.

(Source: Hassan F. (2011). Water history of our times: IHP Essay on water history (Volume 2). Paris, France: UNESCO Publishing. © 2011, UNESCO).

The dawn of advance computer modeling in the 1960s began to predict possible outcomes of the rise in CO₂ levels. The models consistently showed that doubling of CO₂ could produce a warming of 2°C or higher within the next century (Voosen 2019). Though a different kind of climate worry took hold in the early 1970s, somewhat cooling of earth between 1940 – 1970 due to the post‐war boom of aerosol pollutants which reflected sunlight away from the planet, WMO started to express concern on human‐induced CO₂ emission, global warming, and potential consequences around the same time (i.e. early 1970s). During the 1980s scientific concerns about global warming grew, global temperature increased sharply, and it started to get political attention. As a result, the WMO and UNEP established IPCC under the UN in 1988 to investigate and report on scientific evidence on climate change, potential economic and political impacts, and suggest possible international responses to climate change. Since then, IPCC has been central to the subsequent debates and processes around the development of climate change policies. Since the 1990s, scientific research on climate change has included multiple disciplines and has expanded further. Research since the 1990s are summarized in the form of Assessment Reports published in regular interval by IPCC. After the first assessment report (FAR) published in 1990, IPCC has already released five such assessment reports and the sixth assessment report (AR6) is underway. The IPCC FAR in 1990 fed into the drafting of the UNFCCC in 1991, which was later signed by 166 nations at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio in 1992 and came into force in 1994.

Table 1.3 Selected international negotiations on climate change in light of increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Source: Updated from Shivakoti BR, and Shrestha S (2014).

Year	CO2 (ppm)*	Major development and outcomes
2015	400.83	Paris Climate Agreement (PCA)
2013	396.66	On May 10, 2013, NOAA and Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) for the first time detected daily CO2 average concertation temporarily reaching 400 ppm First volume of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) released
2012	393.87	COP18 sets out a timeline to adopt a universal climate agreement by 2015, to come into effect in 2020
2011	391.74	The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action at COP17: governments clearly recognized the need to draw up the blueprint for a fresh universal, legal agreements to deal with climate change beyond 2020
2010	389.84	Cancun Agreements, drafted and largely accepted by the COP (COP16) – comprehensive measures for mitigation, adaptation, financing, technology transfer and capacity building
2009	387.35	Attended by close to 115 world leaders at the high‐level segment, Copenhagen Accord drafted at COP15 recognizes scientific view on limiting warming below 2°C; countries later submitted emission reduction pledges or mitigation action pledges, all non‐binding developed countries agreed to support a goal of mobilizing US$100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries
2007	383.93	IPCC fourth assessment report (AR4) released; IPCC awarded 2007 Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the year. At COP13, Parties agreed on the Bail Road Map, which charted the way towards a post‐Kyoto Protocol (KP) outcome.
2006	381.88	Stern Review on the Economics of climate change published – emphasis on early action in mitigation and adaptation; benefits of action outweigh cost of inaction
2005	379.95	Entry into force of the KP
2001	371.30	IPCC Third Assessment Report (AR3) released, Marrakesh Accords adopted at COP7 detailing rules for implementation of the KP
1997	363.73	KP adopted at Conference of Parties 3 (COP3) meeting held in Kyoto – a binding agreement among nations to curb GHG emission through a number of market and non‐market‐based mechanisms
1995	360.80	IPCC Second Assessment Report (SER) released; The first Conference of the Parties (COP1) in Berlin held
1994	358.69	UNFCCC enters into force
1992	356.73	UNFCCC treaty agreed at Rio Earth Summit
1990	354.39	IPCC’s First Assessment Report (FAR) released. IPCC and 2nd World Climate Conference (WCC) call for a global climate change treaty
1988	351.51	IPCC established
1979	336.91	The first WCC held; World Climate Research Program launched
1967	323.04	International Global Atmospheric Research Program established
1958	315.71#	High accuracy measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration initiated by Charles David Keeling at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii
1800‐1870	290 (around) #	Beginning of Industrial Revolution

^* Average annual atmospheric CO ₂ concentration (ppm) observed at Mauna Loa Observatory, Accessed on 24^th April, 2020 from: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/data/index.php?parameter_name=Carbon%2BDioxide&site=MLO

^# Values are taken from Shivakoti and Shrestha ( 2014 ).

The government leaders continued discussion on potential ways to curb the GHG emissions to prevent dire consequences of climate change and finally reached the first global agreement to reduce GHG emissions in 1997, which is popularly known as the “Kyoto Protocol”. Unfortunately, USA withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 citing the concerns that the deal would hurt the US economy. IPCC published its third assessment report (TAR) in the same year saying that global warming is “very likely” with highly damaging future impacts. Al Gore, the former vice president of USA, put political weight on the climate change through a film titled “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Mr. Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly shared with IPCC, for his work on climate change. By 2007, 2008, and 2009 the existence and dangers of climate change were increasingly recognized with growing scientific evidence and understanding of climate change and its impacts, and increasing representation of this in the press; public awareness and concern about unusual weather patterns; and political change (notably in the US Administration, and in Australia). Further to that the Stern Review (Stern 2006) translated climate change into gross domestic product (GDP) terms indicating up to 20% of damage in GDP if climate change is left unchecked but curbing it would cost about 1% of global GDP. More recently, UNEP has been publishing its emission gap report and adaptation gap report to highlight the seriousness of the problem. Despite that, some skeptics continue to argue that the predictions presented by the IPCC and publicized in the media were overblown, while the whole the climate negotiations and deliberation by the governments, private sectors, businesses, as well as individual level responses are far from adequate.

In 2015, SDGs included “Climate Action” as the 13th goal out of the 17 SDGs to streamline climate actions in coordinated and collaborated ways at different levels. In the same year, PCA was signed as another milestone treaty on climate change, in which 195 countries pledged to set targets for their own GHG cuts to keep the warming level to 2°C and to report their progress. Like the case of the Kyoto Protocol, USA again back‐tracked from the agreement in 2016 by the newly elected president. In 2018, IPCC published a report that concluded “rapid, far‐reaching” actions are needed to cap global warming at 1.5 °C and avert the irreversible consequences for the planet (IPCC 2018). In the same year the “School Climate Strike” initiative led by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish young climate activist, caught global attention and raised awareness on the need for climate action. The initiative was followed by over 17 000 students in 24 countries within 3‐4 months. It led to her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in March 2019. The UN Climate Summit held in August 2019 reinforced that “1.5°C is the socially, economically, politically, and scientifically safe limit to global warming by the end of this century” and set the deadline for achieving net zero emissions to 2050.

With the evolution of IPCC’s assessment reports, the field of climate research is also growing at a faster pace to enable us to better understand the future climate. The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) was established in 1980 under the joint sponsorship of the International Science Council (ISC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WCRP has made significant contribution to advancing climate science since then. It started Coupled Model Inter‐Comparison Project (CMIP) (Phase‐I) in 1995/96 as a collaborative framework to improve knowledge on climate change. The Phases 1 and 2 were initiated in 1995 and 1996. The CMIP3 (or the Phase III) (2005–2006), in which a collection of climate model outputs was coordinated and stored at one location and results were used in preparing the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The CMIP5 (2010–2014) included more metadata describing model simulations than previous phases. The IPCC AR5 summarized information of CMIP5 experiments. The planning of the CMIP6 began in 2013 and results are expected to be summarized in AR6.

With more warming in recent years, growing body of scientific literatures, and wider coverage in media, climate change is getting more and more attention than ever before. Global communities through national governments, are putting coordinated efforts to reduce GHG emissions, limit warming of the planet. Different stakeholders have their roles to play to make the climate action (SDG13) a reality for saving our planet.