Strategies for mitigation of climate change; a review.

Climate change is defned as the shift in climate patterns mainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions from natural systems and human activities. So far, anthropogenic activities have caused about 1.0 °C of global warming above the pre-industrial level and this is likely to reach 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052 if the current emission rates persist. In 2018, the world encountered 315 cases of natural disasters which are mainly related to the climate. Approximately 68.5 million people were afected, and economic losses amounted to $131.7 billion, of which storms, foods, wildfres and droughts accounted for approximately 93%. Economic losses attributed to wildfres in 2018 alone are almost equal to the collective losses from wildfres incurred over the past decade, which is quite alarming. Furthermore, food, water, health, ecosystem, human habitat and infrastructure have been identifed as the most vulnerable sectors under climate attack. In 2015, the Paris agreement was introduced with the main objective of limiting global temperature increase to 2 °C by 2100 and pursuing eforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C. This article reviews the main strategies for climate change abatement, namely conventional mitigation, negative emissions and radiative forcing geoengineering. Conventional mitigation technologies focus on reducing fossil-based CO2 emissions. Negative emissions technologies are aiming to capture and sequester atmospheric carbon to reduce carbon dioxide levels. Finally, geoengineering techniques of radiative forcing alter the earth’s radiative energy budget to stabilize or reduce global temperatures. It is evident that conventional mitigation eforts alone are not sufcient to meet the targets stipulated by the Paris agreement; therefore, the utilization of alternative routes appears inevitable. While various technologies presented may still be at an early stage of development, biogenic-based sequestration techniques are to a certain extent mature and can be deployed immediately.