Climate change legislation sees huge increase

More than 1,200 climate laws have been introduced since 1997, with a sharp rise in the number of countries legislating since the 2015 Paris Agreement, writes Alex Kirby of the Climate News Network.

A growing number of countries are passing laws aimed at ensuring they will keep their promises to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, new research shows. But some still need to do more to give their pledges practical effect under national laws.

An analysis by researchers and staff of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC, shows a clear rise in the number of countries introducing legislation to support the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) they have undertaken to make under the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The NDCs detail the emissions cuts each country intends to make to help to reach the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2°C.

Analysis by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science shows that 14 new laws and 33 new executive policies related to climate change have been introduced since the Paris summit in December 2015. Of the new laws and policies, 18 mainly focus on climate change, while four specifically relate to NDCs.

The analysis relies on a new online database of global climate change legislation developed by Grantham and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, US. The new laws add to more than 1,200 climate-related laws enacted globally since 1997, now involving 164 countries and including 93 of the top 100 emitters – up from 99 countries in 2015.

Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC’s executive secretary, says: “We are witnessing serious and significant support for the Paris Agreement from across countries and continents, and from cities and businesses to civil society. Today we present further evidence from the world of policymaking that shows how countries are starting to add to and to tailor existing legislative frameworks to respond to the aims and ambitions of the new Agreement.”

A 2016 analysis showed that seven of the G20 members, including the EU as a whole, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Mexico and South Africa, had emission reduction targets in domestic legislation or policy that were entirely consistent with their Paris pledges.

But that study also pointed out that in the 13 other G20 countries there was a gap between the signatories’ pledges to the Paris Agreement and the legal frameworks they had in place to make those cuts.