Climate policies worldwide continue to expand, with Asia, Latin America, and Africa increasingly setting the pace on policy innovation, according to new data from the Oxford Climate Policy Monitor, which is being used by the UN’s Taskforce on Net Zero Policy.
The Oxford Climate Policy Monitor, an output of the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Policy, assesses how economic regulations align with climate goals around the world, tracking the laws and policies countries are introducing to meet their net zero targets. The project is powered by a unique global network of 80 leading law firms working pro bono.
The latest full dataset from the Monitor was released today at COP31. The UN’s Taskforce on Net Zero Policy also published Policy Matters: Charting a Path to Net Zero, which draws on data from the Monitor.
Overall, climate policy continues to advance across the G20, with retrenchment or dilution in some regions, like North America, more than offset by advancement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Professor Thomas Hale
Professor Thomas Hale, Professor in Global Public Policy and co-director of the Oxford Climate Policy Hub, which produces the Monitor, says: “Overall, climate policy continues to advance across the G20, with retrenchment or dilution in some regions, like North America, more than offset by advancement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Corporate and financial policy frameworks have continued to expand, both in the number of measures adopted and their overall ambition.”
Professor Thom Wetzer, Associate Professor of Law and Finance at the Faculty of Law and co-director of the Oxford Climate Policy Hub, says: “At COP31, geopolitical divisions risk dominating the headlines. But climate progress also depends on decisions made far from the negotiating table: the laws that shape investment, energy systems, and corporate behaviour. Our remarkable pro bono network of 80 leading law firms helps bring this less visible story into focus, revealing where governments continue to strengthen the legal foundations for the transition, and where important gaps remain.”
This year's analysis covers 39 countries (including all the G20), representing more than 85% of global emissions and GDP.
Dr Emma Lecavalier, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Climate Policy Hub at the Blavatnik School of Government, says: “The long view of climate policy is that it is becoming more ambitious (targeting faster, deeper emissions cuts); more comprehensive (covering a larger portion of the economy); and more real, with growing evidence of implementation.
“However, the stringency of climate policies – the extent to which they are mandatory and enforced – has seen slower growth.”
The data indicates that policy reversals have been concentrated in the Americas and Europe, particularly the USA, but remain limited. Of the policies examined, 718 are unchanged, 45 have been delayed, 32 weakened, and only 11 repealed (with the USA accounting for 8 of those 11).
New areas of climate policy
The Monitor looks at nine critical policy domains: climate-related disclosure, transition planning, public procurement, carbon credits (on which Bhavya Gupta and Thomas Hale have published an additional policy brief), prudential rules, methane abatement, buildings, aviation, and trade.
Three of these policy domains are new this year. They cover buildings, which account for 37% of global carbon emissions; aviation, which accounts for over 3% of global emissions; and trade measures, including positive or negative incentives related to the import of four clean technologies (batteries, electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics, and wind turbines). Trade policy has become a geopolitical issue as countries pursue net zero without becoming too dependent on China, which dominates clean technology exports. A new policy brief by Thomas Hale and Claas Mertens analyses the trade findings and their implications for climate, the economy and global security.
The UN’s Taskforce on Net Zero Policy draws on the Oxford data
The Taskforce on Net Zero Policy was established at COP28 in 2023 to advance the work of the UN High-Level Expert Group on the Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities.
The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate adopted in 2015 under the UN, aims to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“The destination has not changed”, Selwin Hart, Special Advisor and Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change at the United Nations, said today while launching the Taskforce’s report drawing on the Oxford Climate Policy Monitor data. “Keeping 1.5°C within reach and achieving global net zero emissions as quickly as possible remain essential if we are to limit the scale and duration of climate overshoot. What is changing is the conversation around how we get there. Competitiveness, energy security and industrial strategy are increasingly being recognised not as reasons to slow the transition, but as powerful reasons to accelerate it.”
Thomas Hale says: “As the world seeks to limit the scale and duration of the 1.5°C overshoot, the focus must be on helping governments undergird their targets with ambitious and effective policies that are actually implemented on the ground.”
The Oxford Climate Policy Hub is a collaboration between the Blavatnik School of Government and the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme (which is a joint initiative of the Oxford Smith School and Oxford's Law Faculty). It is part of the Oxford Net Zero strategic cluster. It was launched in October 2023 as a direct output of the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Policy with a £1m strategic funding grant from the Oxford Martin School. It is also supported by the EU Horizon ACHIEVE Project.