https://www.polity.org.za
Deepening Democracy through Access to Information
Home / News / All News RSS ← Back
Close

Email this article

separate emails by commas, maximum limit of 4 addresses

Sponsored by

Close

Article Enquiry

Rich countries provide no haven from climate doom, study finds

Close

Embed Video

Rich countries provide no haven from climate doom, study finds

Climate Change

26th November 2024

By: Bloomberg

SAVE THIS ARTICLE      EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

Font size: -+

As sovereign debt investors concerned about climate change scrutinise national responses to rising global temperatures, they’re increasingly finding that wealthier nations aren’t doing their part to help address global warming.

Not one country is on track for a 1.5°C future based on 2030 national pledges for cutting emissions, according to the Assessing Sovereign Climate-related Opportunities and Risks Project. What’s more, the review of 70 countries’ emissions and policies shows “no overwhelming trend” that wealthier countries are doing a better job of tackling climate change.

Advertisement

Investors need to see more credible action by governments, said Victoria Barron, chief sustainability officer at GIB Asset Management and ASCOR co-chair, in a statement. “Investors play a pivotal role in driving capital” and “these flows require robust and tangible national climate and energy policies,” she said.

Investors largely agree that climate risks aren’t fully priced into markets, and academics are now studying what they’re calling the climate-sovereign debt doom loop to calculate the potential costs to countries.

Advertisement

ASCOR’s findings come at a time when countries also increasingly find themselves the subject of legal threats for allegedly failing to protect their citizens from raging fires and floods. The International Court of Justice will hold hearings next month as it weighs in on the debate.

And prospects aren’t improving in the US, the world’s biggest economy, where President-elect Donald Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. He also nominated a fracking-company executive to head the Energy Department.

In Europe, corporate pushback is testing policymakers’ commitment to sustainability initiatives, already under attack because of what’s seen as high administrative costs.

ASCOR was created three years ago to help investors measure, monitor and compare how countries are responding to climate change. Costa Rica and Angola stand out for being close to hitting their 1.5°C benchmarks, the report said. Meanwhile, less than 20% of countries have committed to halt the approvals of new coal, oil and gas production and more than 80% don’t have transparent and credible commitments to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies.

Financing too is lagging behind. The report’s authors concluded that more than 80% of wealthy countries aren’t contributing their proportional share of an annual $100-billion international climate finance goal, which was increased to $300-billion at the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Demand for more and consistent information led ASCOR to expand the project’s scope beyond an initial 25 countries to the 70 countries. On the plus side, 40 countries now have in place legal frameworks for addressing climate change and three-fourths have plans for managing physical risks, the researchers said.

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE

To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here

Comment Guidelines

About

Polity.org.za is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Engineering News
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa

Read more

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Polity.org.za is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options

Email Registration Success

Thank you, you have successfully subscribed to one or more of Creamer Media’s email newsletters. You should start receiving the email newsletters in due course.

Our email newsletters may land in your junk or spam folder. To prevent this, kindly add newsletters@creamermedia.co.za to your address book or safe sender list. If you experience any issues with the receipt of our email newsletters, please email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za