Lindahl one of the law firms behind Climate Policy Monitor

Climate Policy Monitor is a continuously updated public resource that provides everyone with the ability to evaluate the ambition, scope and strictness of climate-related regulations over time. A total of 30 major economies will be audited in three areas in 2024. The tool will be expanded to more areas and jurisdictions next year.

The results presented by Oxford University at the climate summit in Baku established that net-zero regulations are certainly on the increase globally, but the implementation gap remains. Although regulations in some areas, such as information requirements linked to climate impact, are relatively robust, there are no clear and ambitious standards in other areas.

“Implementation gap” between goals and results

The leading researchers behind Climate Policy Monitor consider that the study comes at a critical time, when the world is facing an “implementation gap” between climate goals and results. While countries, companies and other stakeholders set net-zero targets, global emissions continue to increase. As countries prepare to submit new commitments under the Paris Agreement next year, it is therefore crucial for overall goals to be supported by concrete rules and policies in order to guarantee implementation.

“It is pointed out, among other things, that catastrophic climate change can’t be prevented by ambitious commitments by individual nations and companies alone,” explains Johanna Lindqvist, an environmental law attorney at Lindahl and the person responsible for the firm’s participation in the research.

She says it has been both inspiring and rewarding to be able to contribute to this important work as a partner of Oxford University.

“Tools such as Climate Policy Monitor can be incredibly important for development by allowing insight and an overview that can help close the gap between ambitious goals and actual results,” she says.

“Different perspectives on sustainability and climate issues have been high up on the agenda for many years, both for us at Lindahl and for our clients. We all have a joint responsibility to contribute to sustainable development. For example we, as lawyers, can contribute our knowledge and resources to global collaborations of this kind,” says Mårten Steen, the Lindahl Chairperson.

Links:

You will find the Swedish analysis here

Climate Policy Monitor home page

The three areas currently being evaluated by Climate Policy Monitor are:

Climate-related information: Obligations for companies and financial institutions to publicly report information on risks relating to climate change, their contribution to the problem and/or the policies they have in place.

Transition planning: Rules that require companies to report on steps they will take to adapt to climate goals.

Public procurement: Rules that align government spending – which normally accounts for 10-15% of a country's GDP and includes everything from vehicles to new hospitals – to governments’ climate goals.

About Climate Policy Monitor:

• Covers 30 jurisdictions (G20+).

• Covers three areas at present: information requirements, transition planning and public procurement.

• Evaluates policy tools and regulatory areas according to a common framework: 225 data measurement points per policy tool.

• Data is openly accessible at: https://climatepolicymonitor.ox.ac.uk/. The research team is available in order to support journalists who wish to use data from the tool.

• Enabled by a global network of 48 law firms providing pro bono research, which makes both context-specific and internationally comparable data possible.

• This is one of the results of the research programme Net Zero Regulation & Policy Hub at Oxford University.