NDC Check-in: How has environmental policy changed since Paris?

Author:

Joe Douglas

Bonn, the home of COP23. (Flickr/Matthias Zepper)

With COP23 due to start in less than a week’s time, now is a good time to take stock of how the world has changed since COP22, COP21 and the Paris Agreement. Leaving aside the United States, which receives a fairly constant level of attention with regards to its climate policy, this review briefly considers the progress of the other big three contributors to climate change – China, the EU and India – in meeting their Nationally Declared Commitments (NDCs). It is important to remember that NDCs are produced internally by the state, don’t represent legally binding contracts, and include no obligate sanction for the failure of a state to achieve its set goals. The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific initiative that assesses the efforts of different countries to tackle climate change and rates them relative to their impact on the climate, is an excellent resource for exploring the relationship between what is being said about climate policy and what is really going on. The central goals of each NDC, supplied from the UN’s central INDC database, are listed with each entry.

China

NDC:

• To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to peak early.
• To lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level.
• To increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20%.
• To increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters on the 2005 level.
  
  

Prior to COP21, the Chinese government was already setting ambitious targets for curbing the country’s greenhouse gas output, enshrining climate issues in the 12th 5-year plan with the apparent long-term goal of creating an ‘ecological civilisation’. Many influential people and groups are convinced of the validity of this claim – James Thornton, the founder of ClientEarth, being a notable example – highlighting the ability of Xi’s communist party to implement strong policy changes quickly, as well as the state’s long-term perspective, as reasons to trust in the legitimacy of China’s commitment to reduce emissions in the most polluting country on Earth.

Positive changes in the last three years include the introduction of powers for NGOs to sue companies in breach of emissions regulations, the boosting of government investment in gas and renewable energy sources, and most importantly the significant declines in coal use – in 2016 the communist party assigned $4.6 billion to the closure of 4300 coal mines. There are even whispers that China’s CO2 output may be about to peak. The success of China’s recent glut of environmental policy changes, however, is only a reflection of the goals it set itself in the Paris Climate Agreement, goals which the CAT judges to be insufficient to help restrict global temperature increase to 2°C. Largely this is due to the inadequacy of the supplementary NDC target of obtaining 10% of the nation’s energy from gas and 20% from non-fossil fuels by 2030, a target that is insufficient given the massive contribution China currently makes to global emissions. An emphasis on CO2 in Chinese policy has also contributed to a convenient lack of commitments to reducing some of the other greenhouse gases. Given the gains made in Chinese environmental protectionism in the last few years, however, the state’s pride over the initial progress it has made seems somewhat justifiable.

EU

NDC:

• A binding target of an at least 40% domestic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990.
  
• Individual parties to communicate their own INDCs by 2015.
  
  

Although the European Union doesn’t have complete control over the environmental policy of its member states, when it comes to global climate commitments the EU does to a certain extent act as a single unit. This is evident in its pledge to achieve mean 40% reductions – from the 1990 baseline – before 2030 across all member states. In a way this overarching goal may be advantageous, as it provides a common benchmark for each of the EU’s constituent members to target. Giving each committed member a blank slate on how to achieve this goal, however, creates problems of efficacy, reflected in the EU’s constant revision of the systems it uses to encourage compliance.

While the Chinese government has exerted its unilateral control to implement policy changes, the EU has taken a market approach. One way it has done this is through the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), which caps the level of carbon emissions that can be produced by industry within a country. Emissions credits can then be bought and sold by companies allowing them to either raise their limit if necessary or to take advantage of their low emissions. The idea behind this is that EU-wide emissions targets can be met while allowing flexibility of manufacturers that struggle to meet stringent guidelines. But the system has come under scrutiny for failing to produce the declines necessary to meet the 40% target; not least from the EU legislative bodies themselves, which as of 2017 are hoping to crack down on oversupply and devaluation of emissions credits by increasing the rate at which the overall emissions cap is lowered, from 1.74% to 2.2%. Even the EU therefore recognises the inadequacy of the systems currently in place – even assuming the cooperation of member states – for achieving its flagship 2030 goal.

India

NDC:

• To reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 33%–35% by 2030 below 2005 levels.
• To achieve about 40% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030 with the help of transfer of technology and low cost international finance including from Green Climate Fund (GCF).
• To create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
  
  

Although the overall greenhouse gas emissions of India are almost on a par with the EU, this is largely due to the cumulative effect of the 1.2 billion people who call the country home. As India’s population begins to crest, the job of the Indian government will likely get easier again. However, the country is taking great pains to avoid the path taken by China with regards to boosting energy production to support economic growth, by tackling coal use before it becomes the dominant energy source. This is reflected in the focus on non-fossil fuels in the Indian NDC, and was recently further enforced by the 2016 Draft Electricity Plan, which aims to meet nearly 60% energy using renewable sources by 2027. While these efforts are admirable, they aren’t a completely accurate representation of Narendra Modi’s attitude to the environment since his election in 2014, which at times has been ruthless – for example, cutting the budget of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change by 50% in his first year in office and permitting industrial activity in many previously protected regions. The case of India demonstrates once again the way NDCs can mask the true goings-on in a state’s environmental practices.

The weaknesses of the Paris Climate Agreement are evident in the lack of significant alterations to the mid-term strategies of parties like China, the EU and India in the wake of its introduction. With countries able to set their own targets, the temptation to produce NDCs that don’t require any ambitious changes in policy seems to have proved too great in many cases. For this reason the CAT rates the efforts of most countries as at least ‘insufficent’ – India being an exception, needing to achieve much less to make a fair contribution to global climate efforts due to the relatively low levels of emissions per capita it needs to negate. Although only two years have past since Paris, making it perhaps too early to lament a lack of change, the inadequacy of some of the biggest polluter’s NDCs is real cause for concern.

More information and nice graphs from the CAT available on their website (http://climateactiontracker.org/) than you can shake a stick at, as well as other relevant articles and papers below:

• Barry, E. & Bagri, N.T. (4 December 2014). "Narendra Modi, Favoring Growth in India, Pares Back Environmental Rules". The New York Times.
• Clark, A. (22 May 2017) “China’s environmental clean-up to have big effect on industry” FT.
• Gleeson-White (10 September 2017) “My job is to clean up the environment, and China really wants that” The Guardian.
• Kothari, Ashish (27 September 2014). "A Hundred Days Closer to Ecological and Social Suicide" Economic & Political Weekly. 49 (39).
• Safi, M. (22 December 2016) “India plans nearly 60% of energy capacity from non-fossils fuels by 2027” The Guardian.
  
• Wang, Q. & Li, R. (2017) “Decline in China’s coal consumption: An evidence of peak coal or a temporary blip?” Energy Policy 108: 696-701.