The COVID-19 Pandemic and Carbon Emissions: A Sectoral Analysis of India and Global Trends Against the Paris Agreement Targets

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented contraction in global economic activity, producing a rare natural experiment for observing the relationship between human activity and carbon emissions. This paper examines sector-wise variation in CO2 emissions in India and globally during the pandemic year of 2020, using daily near-real-time data from the Carbon Monitor, and benchmarks observed changes against the 7.6% annual reduction target required under the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. We find a global CO2 decline of 4.57% in 2020 relative to the 2019 baseline, substantially below the Paris-required threshold, and achieved only through the severe disruption of most economic activity. India's overall decline was steeper at 8.33%, driven disproportionately by the industrial sector (-13.92%) and domestic aviation (-45.71%), reflecting the comparative stringency of India's lockdown measures. Critically, emissions in most sectors had substantially recovered to pre-pandemic levels by the second half of 2020, while ground transportation and aviation showed sustained decline through year-end. The findings suggest that pandemic-induced emission reductions represent a temporary and structurally shallow disruption rather than a meaningful contribution to long-term decarbonization, and that achieving Paris targets will require sustained structural transformation across all major emitting sectors.