Every five years, countries participating in the Paris Agreement submit new climate pledges that are expected to build on their previous commitments. When India released its long-awaited 2035 pledge this spring, all three of its major targets had increased. Postdoctoral Research Associate Mel George, in the School of Public Policy and Center for Global Sustainability, wanted to know what those higher targets would mean for the country’s actual emissions.
The answer was not as straightforward as the numbers suggested. George’s analysis shows that India’s new pledge can allow faster annual growth in total emissions from 2030 to 2035 than its previous pledge allowed during the decade leading up to 2030.
George explores the finding in his new paper, which looks at what counts as progress as countries update their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. “On the surface, the new pledge looked stronger because all three headline numbers were higher than its previous pledge,” said George. “But the numbers also seemed modest compared with what India had already achieved, what experts within the country were projecting or what it was already on track to do.”
Part of the reason lies in how the targets are structured. Rather than setting a limit on total emissions, one of India’s main targets measures emissions in relation to the size of its economy. This means that India can make progress toward the target while its overall emissions continue to rise as its economy grows.
George found similar issues with India’s other major climate targets. Its clean power goal increased even though it had already surpassed its previous target ahead of schedule, while its new carbon sink goal could be reached at a slower pace than India had previously reported. “The paper looks past the headline numbers and asks what the targets actually require,” said George.
The Paris system or architecture gives countries flexibility in how they frame their climate pledges. That flexibility helped make the agreement possible, but it also makes it harder to tell whether each new pledge is truly stronger than the last one.Mel George Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Public Policy and CGS
India is not the only example. George also examines climate commitments from China and the European Union, as well as the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. While the circumstances differ, they point to a larger challenge built into the agreement. “The Paris system or architecture gives countries flexibility in how they frame their climate pledges,” said George. “That flexibility helped make the agreement possible, but it also makes it harder to tell whether each new pledge is truly stronger than the last one.”
George argues that future assessments of global climate progress should help make that distinction clearer. He recommends comparing each country’s new pledge with its previous one to determine what both would actually mean for emissions. The approach would allow countries to continue setting their own types of targets while giving policymakers a clearer picture of whether those commitments are becoming more ambitious over time. “If the Paris process is supposed to make climate pledges stronger over time, we need a way to check whether that is actually happening,” said George.
