SUSTAINABILITY: CLIMATE CHANGE //
G20 PERFORMANCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE 2008–2024
100
75
50
25
0
Compliance (%)
Conclusions (% words)
Commitments (%)
commitments averaged 70%. From 2019 to 2023, when there was a ministerial meeting, compliance averaged 82%. The environment and climate ministers can work to mobilise their bosses to raise the ambition of the commitments they already comply well with. The G20 demonstrates strong verbal support for UN Climate as the core climate governance body, averaging 84% compliance with commitments that reference the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, these commitments are often very general with loose parameters for achieving compliance. The G20 should continue to strongly support the UNFCCC while taking advantage of the G20 forum to smooth relations among G20 members that represent competing negotiating blocs under the UNFCCC umbrella. The G20 can also strengthen its commitments by including short-term deadlines, which already have higher compliance: commitments with a six-month or shorter timetable averaged 85% compliance, while the one with a one-year timetable had 50% and the one with a multi-year timetable had 43%.
The G20 can link climate action with the other SDGs, in keeping with the focus of the Johannesburg Summit. This would advance co-benefits, such as intersections between climate change and gender, health and poverty reduction. Moreover, G20 climate commitments that also broadly reference sustainability averaged 73% compared to 68% for those that did not. However, the G20 should ensure specificity to increase impact: it should name the specific SDG it seeks to link with SDG 13. No progress is possible without climate financing. The financial powerhouses of the G20, which mobilised trillions of dollars for the 2009 global financial crisis and helped coordinate action on vaccines within months for the Covid-19 pandemic, can have the biggest impact. Yet climate finance is its weakest area, averaging only 64% compliance. To reach the SDGs by 2030, including SDG 13, the G20 must get serious about transferring the trillions it gives to fossil fuel companies to lifting up the people running the small enterprises, subnational governments and civil society on the front lines of the climate emergency who can get the job done with the right backing and support.
// BRITTANEY WARREN Brittaney Warren, MES, is a senior summit accountability researcher and volunteer manager for the G20 and G7 Research Groups based at the University of Toronto. She has pub- lished on compliance outcomes of G7 and G20 commitments, and on the G20’s governance of climate change and health. She is co-author of Reconfiguring the Global Governance of Climate Change (with John Kirton and Ella Kokotsis). She is pursuing a master’s degree in counselling psy- chotherapy, expanding her interdisci- plinary focus to include mental health and well-being. X-TWITTER @brittaneywarren www.g20.utoronto.ca
81 globalgovernanceproject.org
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