Climate Change Performance Index 2024: Results are concerning as first three spots remain empty
The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) is an independent monitoring tool designed to enable transparency in national and international climate politics. It has a leading role in informing on the 2015 Paris Agreement’s implementation phase.
Since 2005, the CCPI has been providing analysis of countries’ climate protection performance. It evaluates 63 countries and the EU – places that together generate more than 90% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the official CCPI website.
Climate change an existential threat to life on Earth
The key tool looks at four categories involving 14 indicators: greenhouse gas emissions (40% of the overall score), climate policy (20%), renewable energy (20%) and energy use (20%) – eventually making it possible to compare efforts and identify progress and setbacks.
The climate crisis has become an existential threat to life on Earth. In order to reduce the emergency’ impacts, it has become important than ever to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as stated in the Paris deal.
But the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service recently confirmed 2023 as the hottest year on record. In addition, global mean temperatures between February 2023 and January 2024 have crossed the 1.5 degrees threshold. But this doesn’t imply a breach of the Paris Agreement.
CCPI 2024: Top ten countries on the list
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4. Denmark
5. Estonia
6. Philippines
7. India
8. Netherlands
9. Morocco
10. Sweden
Rankings are based on each country’s overall score. The first three overall positions remain empty as no country performed well enough in all index categories to achieve an overall very high rating, according to the official CCPI website.
The results show that even if all countries start to express commitment as high as the current frontrunners such as Denmark and Estonia, efforts would still be insufficient to prevent the hazardous repercussions from climate change.
CCPI 2024: Comparing G20 and EU performance
In terms of G20 performance, India (7th), Germany (14th) and the EU (16th) are the only three G20 countries/regions among the high performers. 15 G20 countries have received an overall low or very low. The G20 members account for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The worst-performing G20 countries are Canada, Russia, Korea and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, in terms of EU performance, 14 members are among the high and medium performers. The Netherlands is at a high level, Italy is at 44th spot, and Poland at 55th due to its very low rating.
The countries scoring the top positions on the list have no reason to ease up. Even greater efforts and actions by governments are needed to set the world on track to keep global heating under a 2 degrees Celsius increase. Even better, 1.5 degrees.
