Earlier this month, delegates from 195 countries met at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris to discuss the historic climate change plan.  After a grueling two weeks, an agreement was finally reached in an attempt to curb global warming to less than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Intense negotiations and discussions took place over the course of the two-week conference, resulting in the first international agreement committing nations to reduce emissions on Saturday, December 12th. 

According to Barack Obama, the deal is “the best chance we have to save the one planet we have,” adding that it could be a “turning point” toward a low-carbon future.

Known as the Paris Agreement, the plan seeks to limit and reduce world-wide greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of economic development, by the year 2020. All countries will be required to take some action in order to achieve this goal.

The ultimate goal of the plan is to limit rising temperatures to within about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). But it keeps the door open to a more ambitious rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) sought by some small island nations who are feeling the impact of rising sea-levels, one of many catastrophic results of global warming.

“This is truly a historic agreement,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the New York Times. “For the first time, we have a truly universal agreement on climate change, one of the most crucial problems on Earth.”