Three years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, global climate action is not yet sufficient to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.

In order to achieve the Paris targets, more ambitious climate action is needed. In the context of the newly released special report Global Warming of 1.5°C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is ever more urgent to act now.

By showing the substantial difference in impacts between warming of 1.5°C and 2°C, the IPCC report states that limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in all sectors. Accordingly, global emissions must decrease by 45% by 2030 (as compared to 2010 levels). Global CO2 emissions need to decline by 2050.

The index is published by Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute and the Climate Action Network. It has only been possible to include a review of each country’s national and international climate policies thanks to the help of around 350 energy and climate experts from all over the world. The review charts the efforts that have been made to avoid dangerous climate change, and also evaluates the various countries’ current efforts
to implement the Paris Agreement.

We greatly appreciate these experts’ time, efforts and knowledge in contributing to this publication. The experts are mainly representatives of NGOs who work within their respective countries, being experts on the climate policies of their countries with a high level of independence.