The Japanese government formally decided Tuesday to sign the Paris Agreement, a long-sought international framework negotiated with the aim of making efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions legally binding, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported on Tuesday.

At a signing ceremony to be held Friday at the UN headquarters in New York, at least 130 countries, including major emitters like the United States and China, are expected to sign the agreement in the presence of the leaders of 60 or more countries.

The landmark agreement, adopted at a UN conference on climate change in December, aims to keep the global average rise in temperature to below 2 C, seen as a point of no return in the battle to avoid further serious consequences of climate change, such as droughts, floods, melting glaciers and rising seas

Source: MENA