Climate Governance into Action

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication created a survey, the Six Americas Super Short SurveY (SASSY), for analysing the respondents' impression on climate change based on only four questions which finally categorize the audience into six groups, from Alarmed to Doubtful. The results are that in more than two third countries in the world the prevailing group is Alarmed, demonstrating the public discourse's interest and belief into the changing climate (Leiserowitz 2021). An additional survey by the same research team concluded as well that respondents are more likely to say that their governments should do much more or more to address climate change, with highest percentages in Italy, Colombia, and Spain (all 89%) (Leiserowitz 2021).

Nowadays, the biggest hope in terms of institutional governance and support for the fight against climate change is the Paris Agreement and its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as the national commitments to achieve the pre-determined goals. These NDCs are meant to be submitted every five years to the UNFCCC secretariat as a progression of the previous ones, hence creating a ratcheting up of individual ambitions over time. 

The biggest challenge being faced by the PA is framed by Dimitrov in 2019 as a trilemma: the challenge of simultaneously satisfying all three main conditions for effectiveness—broad participation, deep commitments, and satisfactory compliance rates (Dimitrov 2019). 


So what are the possibilities which we are facing in terms of successful climate governance strategies based on last years' experiences?


The UNFCC shares on their website an article stating the expected rise to 2.7°C based on the current NDCs' pledges made by state participants to the Paris Agreement (UNCC 2022). This clearly represents the inaptitude of national governments to implement effective goals aiming at the fulfilment of the previously pledged 1.5°C limit to global warming.

A recent article in 2022 by Chan et al. debates the effectiveness of more transnational initiatives and their capability to achieve concrete actions in terms of climate governance. It is concluded that "better-performing summits and mobilization processes are more frequently associated with transnational initiatives that have secretariats and monitoring arrangements" suggesting that a more institutionally robust action would lead to more positive results.

The overall argument of the paper is that international organizations and governments acting as orchestrators for non-state actors through summits and by adopting monitoring frameworks and secretariats in their action log would lead to more effective results (Chan 2022).

By analysing the Climate Tracker portal, the EU is explained to be drafting policies and actions which are currently not in place but when implemented would reduce the emissions by 55% by 2030. Nonetheless, domestic actions from Member States is still lacking and prioritizes the usage of gas or oil. On top of this, the Fair Share Target, analysing the level of international support, along with Climate Finance are still very much underperforming in the EU. 



References:


Leiserowitz, A. et al., (June 2021) International Public Opinion on Climate Change. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication 

Dimitrov, Radoslav, et al., (2019) Institutional and environmental effectiveness: Will the Paris Agreement work?. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change

Chan, S., Hale, T., Deneault, A. et al. (2022) Assessing the effectiveness of orchestrated climate action from five years of summits. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 628–633. 

Updated NDC Synthesis Report: Worrying Trends Confirmed, United Nations Climate Change (October 2022), https://unfccc.int/news/updated-ndc-synthesis-report-worrying-trends-confirmed, Accessed on: 22 January 2023

Climate Action Tracker, European Eunion,  https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/south-korea/, Accessed on: 22 January 2023

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