Specifying the Gap between Nations’ Outward-Looking and Domestic Climate Policies: A Call for Measures of Domestic Climate Policy Stringency

As nations fail to meet their climate emission mitigation goals, the ambition gap is widening between international climate policy (enacted by the United Nations) and domestic climate policy (what nations propose and enact). A widely held but little verified conventional wisdom exists that nations o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inClimate (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 9; p. 192
Main Authors Eisenstadt, Todd A., Lopez, Jennifer
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2023
Subjects
Carbon
climate ambition
Climate change
climate mitigation
Climate policy
climate policy stringency
Climatic changes
Diplomatic & consular services
Economic development
Emissions
Environmental policy
Fossil fuels
Greenhouse gases
International agreements
international climate policy
International organizations
International policies
International policy
Kyoto Protocol
Mitigation
Nation states
Nationally Determined Contribution
Nations
Paris Agreement
Performance indices
Policies
Political aspects
Subsidies
Japan
United States > US
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Summary:As nations fail to meet their climate emission mitigation goals, the ambition gap is widening between international climate policy (enacted by the United Nations) and domestic climate policy (what nations propose and enact). A widely held but little verified conventional wisdom exists that nations over-promise internationally and under-deliver domestically. While little data exist to directly test this hypothesis, we documented this gap by constructing heuristic indexes of domestic and international climate policy performance, showing that nations tend to “lead with the international”. We found that nations’ domestic policies are not significant in explaining emissions, although their international policies are significant. We concluded that beyond identifying this gap, analysts must devise metrics to assess domestic climate policy across a range of issue areas, as domestic policies are the foundation of any global effort to manage climate change.
ISSN:2225-1154
2225-1154
DOI:10.3390/cli11090192