Assessing the Effectiveness of the 10 United Nations Global and Multilateral Climate Treaties

International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) have been implemented to address sustainability challenges and encourage international cooperation. The effectiveness of IEAs remains a topic of discussion, particularly in the context of addressing climate change. As CO₂ emissions are influenced by a country’s economic activity and population size, the question of fairness arises when holding nations accountable for their contributions to climate change. The United Nations (UN) has played a significant role in shaping global treaties on climate change and facilitating multilateral negotiations across member nations. While UN-brokered IEAs offer a framework for cooperation and environmental regulation, debates persist regarding the allocation of responsibility and the effectiveness of implementation. This paper examines specific IEAs relating to global climate change and their achievements, limitations, and potential for improvement.

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) orchestrated by the United Nations in promoting sustainability, with a particular focus on the ten global and multilateral climate treaties. By examining the literature and published reports on their implementation and outcomes, this paper demonstrates that although policies and legislation play critical roles in driving sustainability, and while the list of climate treaties continues to grow and diversify, the effectiveness of these climate treaties in achieving this objective is still a topic of debate. Despite increased efforts for the equitable distribution of commitments towards achieving the goals of these agreements and the signing of multiple treaties, the heavily industrialized nations continue to lag behind in meeting the climate targets. As a result, the natural environment continues to deteriorate, and the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent.

This paper explores literature that highlights a set of limitations afflicting the global climate treaties brokered by the UN, with a particular emphasis on the challenges throughout their lifecycle from formation to enforcement. To achieve this goal, the consulted literature delves into an analysis of the historical development of IEAs and illuminates other areas critical to the fight against climate change, striving to address four critical questions: (1) What is the real added value of bringing all UN member countries onboard with IEAs? (2) Do current treaties fairly allocate climate targets and funding between developed and developing nations? (3) What are current limitations in the UN climate treaties that would persist in future agreements should kept unaddressed? (4) How can best practices from the local community with proven efficiency in reaching the climate targets be supported by governments in the diverse local contexts of different countries?

The study underscores the imperative for international organizations and governments to enable more proactive and efficient local involvement and targeted funding, concepts which could be incorporated into future UN climate treaties or amendments to bridge the effectiveness gap. In such an arrangement, the target audience of this research is international organizations responsible for overseeing global climate treaties and government officials who are involved in the process. The findings of this research and assessment hold the promise to ensure that developing economies focus more on engaging their local communities as a pragmatic approach to meet the global climate goals without exposing their fragile economies while also setting the Global North on a path to expedite their efforts to achieve these goals.

Although this study did not document interventions after the year 2022, it recognizes the dynamic role of policy in providing sustainable practices and activities that extend well into the target year 2030 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, the assessment and selected recommendations for future treaties and amendments to existing treaties are presented with a focus on supporting policies with greater recourse to policy innovation and equitable target assignment amongst participating countries.

Method

This research paper incorporates a literature review of published academic papers, which, in this case, constituted the primary resource to provide background information on the increased utilization of international environmental agreements and their historical development in relation to the growing and proliferating effects of climate change.

Probing deeper into the scope of this study, the ten United Nations global treaties on climate change were obtained from the Information Portal on Multilateral Environmental Agreements ( https://www.informea.org/en/mea-topic/climate-and-atmosphere). Secondary resources, mainly news articles, government literature, and NGO websites, which are referenced herein, were employed in addition to primary resources to assess the effectiveness of these treaties as there is an existing gap in current research evaluating these treaties holistically throughout their life cycle. Two main sources were utilized to access vetted and verified articles. The first was the World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence Database ( https://intelligence.weforum.org/); a subscription plan was available to access Artificial Intelligence (AI) search features and briefing. The second source was the Arab Regional Knowledge Hub (id., Manara) developed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia ( https://manara.unescwa.org/home), which also provides AI-enabled functionalities such as summarizing articles, social media feed, and document analysis.

Supplementary information was also retrieved from social media outlets by following UN Climate Change ( https://twitter.com/UNFCCC), NYT Climate ( https://twitter.com/nytclimate), and NASA Climate ( https://twitter.com/NASAClimate), among others.

Searches for both types of resources included the web search engines of the Harvard Hollis online library, Google Scholar, Elsevier, ProQuest, and Research Gate. Search terms included: “International Environmental Law”, “United Nations Climate Treaties”, “Paris Agreement 2015”, “Evaluation of Climate Activities”, and “Carbon Emissions”; inter alia, keywords relevant to the scope of the study.

Literature Review

Background on International Agreements

International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) are designed to address the pressing sustainability issues by encouraging international cooperation. However, their effectiveness remains a topic of discussion. CO₂ emissions are influenced by a country’s economic activity and population size, leading to questions about the fairness currently considered when holding accountable, diverse nations who contribute differently to climate change.

The United Nations (UN) has played a significant role in shaping global treaties on climate change (United Nations, n.d.) by facilitating multilateral negotiations across all member nations, as shown in Table I. While IEAs offer a framework for cooperation and environmental regulation, they also bring up debates about the allocation of responsibility and the effectiveness of their implementation. The following paragraphs delve deeper into the specific agreements and their achievements, limitations, and potential for improvement.

Table I. The Ten United Nations Global Treaties on Climate Change

Global climate treaty	Year enacted	Parent treaty	Description
Vienna Convention	1969		The Vienna Convention for the protection of the Ozone Layer and its Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is dedicated to the protection of the earth’s ozone layer. With 197 parties, they are the most widely ratified treaties in United Nations history and have, to date, enabled reductions of over 97% of all global consumption of controlled ozone-depleting substances (measured in ODP tonnes).
Montreal Protocol	1989	Vienna Convention	The Montreal Protocol on substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to reduce the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances in order to reduce their abundance in the atmosphere and thereby protect the earth’s fragile ozone Layer. The original Montreal Protocol was agreed on September 16 1987, and entered into force on January 1 1989.
The London Amendment	1992	Vienna Convention	The amendment to the Montreal Protocol was agreed upon by the Second Meeting of the Parties (London, 27–29 June 1990).
The Copenhagen Amendment	1994	Vienna Convention	The Copenhagen Amendment (1992): The amendment to the Montreal Protocol agreed by the Fourth Meeting of the Parties (Copenhagen, 23–25 November 1992).
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change	1994		The Convention on Climate Change sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Kyoto Protocol	1997	United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change	The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008–2012.
The Montreal Amendment	1997	Vienna Convention	The Montreal Amendment (1997): The amendment to the Montreal Protocol agreed by the ninth meeting of the parties (Montreal, 15–17 September 1997).
The Beijing Amendment	2002	Vienna Convention	The Beijing Amendment (1999) The amendment to the Montreal Protocol was agreed upon at the eleventh meeting of the parties (Beijing, November 29–December 3 1999).
Paris Agreement	2015	United Nations framework convention on climate change	The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and–for the first time–brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries in doing so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.
The Kigali Amendment	2016	Vienna convention	The Kigali Amendment (2016): The amendment to the Montreal Protocol agreed by the Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the Parties (Kigali, 10–15 October 2016).

The Rationale for International Agreements

Although environmental law, including IEAs, aims to motivate international actors to work together toward achieving a variety of sustainability goals, their success in accomplishing these environmental targets remains a point of contention among scholars and experts. While some attribute the current climate change cycle and increased CO₂ emissions to the rapid industrialization of largely populated countries in Asia (Ghosh, 2016), recent empirical studies suggest that largely populated countries with limited industrial activities are the least offset from the climate goals when compared with the heavily industrialized economies in the Global North and major oil producing countries as demonstrated in Fig. 1. Primarily, greater industrialization correlates to higher emission of polluting CO₂ gas as noted by Almer and Winkler (2017). Interestingly, the global carbon footprint is largely attributed to these developed nations due to their energy mix used to manufacture modern technological equipment such as mobile devices, computing devices, and data centers (Guptaet al., 2021), technologies that are yet to gain traction in developing economies. Therefore, the population size and growth projections of a particular country are not the only indicators for predicting its contribution to climate change and should be considered in combination with a country’s level of economic activity to accurately estimate CO₂ quantities released into the atmosphere.

Fig. 1. Per capita CO₂ emissions in 2021 from fossil fuels and industry. Fossil emissions in the form of CO₂ released into the atmosphere from the industrial activities of economically developed nations and from the petroleum-related processes of oil-producing countries are higher than those of developing nations with growing populations and limited industry activities. Map retrieved from the Global Carbon Project 2022 by Our World in Data (2022) ( https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions). Copyright 2022 by Our World in Data (2022).

Probing deeper into the dynamics between economic activity and population size, Mitchellet al.’s (2020) analysis of the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) revealed that about 250 IEAs out of the total 3600 were signed in the 1950s, indicating the need to regulate the environmental outcomes of the growing industrial activities of the Global North countries long before many developing countries started nation-wide industrialization programs (Huff & Angeles, 2011) as shown in Fig. 2. Hence, developing nations with substantial economic challenges and relatively low population size/growth are not key contributors to climate change. For example, Almer and Winkler’s (2017) study demonstrated that many Eastern European countries facing an economic downturn after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 “… were unlikely to reach or even exceed their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets” set under the Kyoto Protocol, accounting to the scientific consensus that human-made CO₂ emissions are driving global warming (UNFCCC, n.d.).

Fig. 2. Annual CO₂ emissions from 1750 till 2021 from fossil fuels and industry by the major industrial countries. Chart retrieved from the Global Carbon Project 2022 by Our World in Data (2022) ( https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions). Copyright 2022 by Our World in Data (2022).

Basis and Design of Treaties

Even though, as demonstrated above, developed and developing countries contribute differently to climate change, the UN has brokered most of the global treaties on climate change on a multilateral basis across all member countries. There has been a varying degree of effort to customize the climate goals to account for the countries’ varying levels of socioeconomic development, which can be considered an attempt at achieving climate justice among nations participating in a treaty. Climate Justice then entails not only incorporating the perspectives and necessities of the communities most impacted by climate change but also “mapping international climate change mitigation and adaptation regimes ... deriving universally fair climate stabilization strategies” (Puaschunder, 2020, p. 22).

This approach to Climate Justice began with the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 (Joyner, 2005). It is true that environmental concerns are inherently transboundary and extend beyond political borders (Finus, 2003). However, a fair distribution of commitments to the goals of these treaties necessitates binding the most significant contributors to climate change without exposing the fragile economies of developing nations. Barrett (1998) argues that the Kyoto Protocol, for example, does little to deter non-compliance and that the high participation of countries in a climate treaty does not necessarily indicate its success. Consequently, for over half a century, nations that have signed multiple climate change treaties have had little incentive to change their economic activities, resulting in continued environmental degradation and increasingly apparent climate change impacts.

While Lifecycle Analysis—a method used to analyze the environmental impact of a product or system—is frequently used in academic and professional settings to model environmental footprints, it is also utilized to scrutinize the entire process of creating a climate treaty. For instance, Finus (2003) applies a similar Lifecycle Analysis approach to the design process of International Environmental Agreements, demonstrating that IEAs’ development process strictly adheres to the established conventions of international law and is therefore subject to common drafting challenges, as explored in the next section.

Challenges to Treaty Development

According to Finus (2003), a bottleneck occurs during the early stages of drafting an IEA, where “signing” an agreement does not obligate countries to comply with its provisions but merely serves as an indication of their intention to become part of an agreement. This implies that before an agreement is enforced, the first hurdle of non-compliance arises during the process of forming an IEA, as obtaining consensus among signatories is challenging and often extends for several years. If signatories do agree on the stipulations of an agreement, they become “parties” accountable to a set of goals and targets. The political context in which environmental policy and legislation are drafted to deliver on these commitments may be the main hurdle in this phase of treaty development. As most agreements must be passed by the parliament of the party, IEAs are often subject to a cost-benefit analysis in comparison with other economic and social agreements such as transport, financial flows, and migration. As Carraro and Siniscalco (1998, p. 2) point out, transnational policies that offer opportunities for profitability and optimality tend to receive more support than environmental policy issues. This is one of the reasons why obtaining consensus on the draft agreement is so difficult.

The political context poses another obstacle at the enforcement level of IEAs, as highlighted by Jacobson and Brown Weiss (1997), who found cases of violations of all IEAs covered by their extensive study. The political commitment to IEAs is closely linked to the modern government structure, where institutional coordination is essential across multiple sectors and levels of government. This requirement results in a limited integration of IEAs with “everyday organizational routine throughout all levels of policy-making,” as pointed out by Lenschow (1999) and Jordan and Lenschow (2000, as cited in Jordan and Lenschow (2010, p. 4).

To address these twin challenges, Atapattu (2012) argues that the UN responds to modern environmental challenges by continuously evolving international environmental law through the creation of new agreements and amendments to existing treaties. Atapattu also notes that this process has been particularly evident in the areas of climate change and biodiversity. However, this dynamic process presents challenges in objectively assessing the effectiveness of these policies and laws, resulting in a gap in current literature that does not extensively analyze modern agreements of the 21^st century, such as the Paris Agreement, which aimed to address challenges of non-compliance. As such, there is a need for further awareness and future studies on this topic.

Current Research Trends and Climate Initiatives

In contrast, newly published literature has a greater focus on taking matters into the hands of citizens by proposing strategies to enable more effective community-driven solutions to the increasing negative effects of climate change. According to Robiou du Pont (2024), local action “… is becoming critical in the absence of significant progress towards Paris Agreement commitments” (p. 2).

The trend of local actors taking action to address climate change is gaining momentum due to two key reasons. Firstly, modest progress has been made through international agreements and negotiations, mainly at the high level (e.g., federal governments) due to the absence of coherent national policies, especially in developed industrialized countries such as Canada (Burchet al., 2014). This highlights the need for climate policy to address the fundamental principles of modern societies’ consumption and production patterns (Hausknostet al., 2018) if we are to achieve global climate goals by 2030. Hsuet al. (2020a, p. 2) have calculated that “non-state actors, including companies, associations, international organizations, civil society, cities, and regions”, have the potential to make significant contributions to reducing emissions by 2030 “consistent with a 2° pathway”. Among non-state actors, cities and regions have the greatest potential to contribute.

Secondly, local actors’ role in implementing domestic climate and environmental policy has been recognized in the Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2015). In the absence of significant progress by states toward the Paris Agreement commitments, as mentioned above, local governments are taking advantage of the flexibility provided by the agreement and of the countries’ regular practice of incorporating international law into their national law (Howard & Newball, 2019) to address climate change within their own jurisdictions. Local governments have direct control of critical sources of emissions (Betsill, 2001; Bulkeley & Betsill, 2005), and this has led to the institutionalization of the trend of local actors, in particular in the US, as implementing agents of climate and environmental policy (Rabe, 2008).

The motivation of city officials and organizations to improve their local environment is significant, and the fact that they are in closer contact with key intermediaries and networks of citizens (Broadbent & Ishio, 1998; Bushet al., 2013; Kivimaa, 2014) with promising innovation already happening at the local level (Eisenack & Roggero, 2022; Puppim de Oliveiraet al., 2022; Robiou du Pont et al., 2024), these are not enough factors to achieve global climate goals. Current literature is still identifying solutions and pathways to promote local communities’ critical role as an incubator for climate innovation. Contemporary research, such as that of University of Cambridge (2013), advocates for the local community at the business level to become more proactive in addressing climate change, increasingly shifting the focus away from government-led responses.

Discussion

Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Global UN Climate Change Treaties

Tracking the evolution and impact of climate change treaties can be done by examining the Conference of Parties, more prominently known as COP, which is the official global mechanism responsible for overseeing and making decisions regarding the implementation of these treaties. COP has undergone numerous iterations, with the majority before the widely-known Paris Agreement, which is the most ratified and recognized treaty to date (Dimitrovet al., 2019). There have been 20 prior versions of COP leading up to the Paris Agreement.

An analysis of the full range of COP events, detailed on the DownToEarth online portal (DownToEarth, n.d.-b), reveals a pattern of consecutive conferences overlapping on the same topic, attempting to resolve pending agenda items such as bridging disparate perspectives or generating consensus on unresolved topics. For instance, from the first COP1 in 1995 articulating a growing concern known as climate change, to the declaration of ambitious work sessions in COP2, and from COP3 till COP6 striving to resolve non-agreements between participating parties, technical meetings only took place from COP7 to COP9, six years after the effects of climate change started to be greatly felt by all segments of society across the globe. Afterwards, progress looked optimistic, with COP10 in 2004 taking a more pragmatic approach beyond organizational matters to tackle climate change by focusing on mitigation and adaptation strategies, particularly for developing nations.

Unfortunately, subsequent discussions from 2005 to 2007 did not follow a similar path and sidelined substantive topics on climate change, such as reducing emissions. Instead, and over again, COP11 till COP13 focused on the organizational matters related to extending old agreements (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol) and general topics such as “climate tourism”, newly coined by a BBC reporter participating in the conference. COP14 to COP16 then focused again on substantive topics, focusing on financing as the main hurdle to progress. Later, COP17 discussed yet again another challenge to progress in the form of legally binding commitments, while COP18 returned to the topic of funding with little progress made (DownToEarth, n.d.-a). The remaining COP versions leading up to the Paris Agreement did not introduce any new agenda and continued as a tradition of holding the annual meetings.

These versions discuss, for the most part, administrative and organizational matters that occurred while the adverse effects of climate change continued to grow and even diversify amid sectors. This unfortunate trend persisted even after the Paris Agreement, as can be seen in COP versions after the year 2015. The World Economic Forum’s report, The Global Risks Report 2023, highlights that “despite 30 years of global climate advocacy and diplomacy, the international system has struggled to make the required progress on climate change” (WEF, 2023b, p. 21).

Limitations of UN Global Treaties on Climate Change

Taking a holistic perspective in analyzing the global treaties on climate change reveals common challenges that align with the evolution of COP. Recognizing these limitations is crucial in assessing the effectiveness of these global treaties and taking steps to enhance their impact on restricting the effects of climate change.

Free-Riding Climate Treaties

Many countries participating in climate treaties do not view climate as a global public good and the concept of “local costs but diffuse benefits”, a situation in which the costs of a particular activity are borne by a specific group, but the benefits of that same activity are shared by a larger group (Sandler, 2016, p. 7), is greatly undermined (Barrett, 1994, 2003). Through developing a proposal to combat limited compliance by countries, Nobel laureate William Nordhaus (2021) identified the root cause behind this challenge, which is the lack of a mechanism that explicitly requires the participation of individual countries on a set of climate concerns that transfer their environmental effects beyond their political borders.

This voluntary participation, with the absence of an enforcement mechanism or structure, is known as free-riding. Tørstad (2020) has further highlighted this phenomenon by analyzing the works of Barrett (1999) and Young (2011), which found that the broad participation in the Paris Agreement and other similar UN global treaties is due to offering shallow commitments and goals through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that lack legal binding (i.e., the enforcement mechanism in international law). This has led to skepticism about the ability of a broad bottom-up system to produce sufficient ambition and compliance, as shown in multiple sources such as Banget al. (2016) and Barrett and Dannenberg (2016).

The same work by Nordhaus provides a scenario on free riding from a global carbon price perspective. The example observes countries that “might agree that each country will implement policies that produce a minimum domestic carbon price of $50 per metric ton of CO₂ … but many details for measuring remain to be determined” (p. 1), leaving it very simple for a country to not report on progress and therefore not deliver any action in that regard.

Some international law experts and individuals involved in the development and negotiation of global climate agreements argue that newer treaties like the Paris Agreement led to greater compliance by giving governments a greater sense of ownership (Dimitrovet al., 2019). This is attributed to the agreement’s bottom-up approach through the NDCs article, which allows countries to set their own climate goals instead of being assigned by a senior steering council, thus the opportunity to work on tangible and realistic goals. However, over 5 years later, it has become clear that countries participating in treaties that rely solely on goodwill rather than legally binding provisions often interpret the terms of a treaty to their advantage, leveraging the mixture of mandatory and laissez-faire provisions (Bodansky, 2016).

The latest iteration of COP27 makes it clear that the litmus test for measuring the efficacy of future United Nations efforts on climate change would be the extent to which discussions and deliberations are accompanied by tangible actions, as stated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2022 (UNFCCC, 2022).

Ambiguity of Hybrid Models of Participation

Fig. 3 illustrates that the private sector accounted for approximately 12% of the climate finance in 2021. This significant contribution is noteworthy and surprising as the UN climate agreements are primarily implemented by governments at the global level. The latest set of agreements, particularly the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, have adopted hybrid models that allow governments to fulfill their climate goals through diverse arrangements. This flexible approach has opened doors for private sector involvement in climate finance, contributing to a more comprehensive and collaborative effort to combat climate change.

Fig. 3. Sources of finance for climate adaptation activities in the year 2021. Chart retrieved from the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021, by Climate Policy Initiative (Source: Buchneret al., 2021). Copyright 2021 by Climate Policy Initiative.

Drawing on the preceding section on Current Research Trends and Climate Initiatives, it is apparent that the private sector, particularly local communities, lacks a well-defined government trajectory and instead leans heavily on experimentation (i.e., trial and error). Some contend that this approach is indispensable in promoting innovation and generating effective new concepts. While such assertions are supported by anecdotal evidence, it is instrumental in acknowledging that the success stories of the local community in the Global North cannot be blindly replicated in other regions without considering their specific local context (Bamberger, 1986). Therefore, the greatest added value from such local innovation is to derive success stories from providing the foundation of a policy, guidelines, or roadmap for creating an enabling environment for the local community, which can be included in future amendments to treaties or new treaties altogether.

In that regard, global treaties are to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches and include an assessment of the local community’s economic and geographical context as a pre-requisite to determine whether it possesses the resources necessary to replicate such experimentation. The aim would be tapping into strategic community-driven initiatives without compelling developing nations to invest excessive amounts of time and resources in experimentation.

Another challenge in existing treaties is the absence of a mechanism or a forum to exchange ideas, concerns, or feedback in this domain at a high level. Without explicit provisions beyond giving local communities the freedom to ideate, knowledge diffusion on the potential of local action to expedite work toward the climate goals remains relatively restrained. While some nations with advanced technology and decentralized government structures may capitalize on local action, others may struggle to achieve tangible outcomes despite significant financial investments (Ahmedet al., 2022). Addressing this disparity through climate justice can voice the concerns and perspectives of marginalized countries.

Climate Justice

The yearly progression of COP persists, and the current presidency of the anticipated COP28 launched a “bid to put climate vulnerable youth at the centre of climate talks” (UNFCCC, 2023). What sets this effort apart is that they are not waiting for all countries to convene in the United Arab Emirates by the end of 2023 to begin working towards this goal. Instead, a new global initiative called the International Youth Climate Delegate Program has already been introduced and set into action.

As per the aforementioned source, the International Youth Climate Delegate Program not only sponsors 100 young individuals but also gives priority to delegates from countries classified as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Indigenous Peoples, and other minority groups around the world. This is a demonstration of climate justice, which aims to ensure that the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard (Lopez Pillai, 2023).

However, mainstream media outlets mainly portray climate justice cases relating to social incidents such as underrepresented ethnicities and minority groups, creating a unilateral image that correlates climate justice to only these groups (Russek, 2023). A snapshot of media sources (2023) includes EPA awards of $177 million to environmental justice groups by The Associated Press; The First Great Action Movie About Climate Justice by The Nation; For Real Climate Justice, Philanthropy Must Support the Front Lines, Fund Early and Fund Big by Inside Philanthropy; and DEP seeks input on climate change, environmental justice by The Times-Tribune; amid a multitude of news regarding the same subject.

To achieve significant advancements in both the policy-making and implementation aspects of a climate treaty, it is crucial to promote in the media the importance of another group aside from the community. This group is comprised of developing nations that have joined global climate treaties to address the impacts of climate change that have resulted from activities that they did not initiate. These countries are also making considerable efforts to meet climate targets at the expense of their economic progress, as evidenced in Fig. 4, while responsible countries continue with their environmentally degrading contributions.

Fig. 4. Destination region of climate finance by private and public sectors for the annual average between the years 2019 and 2020. The map indicates that developed nations rely predominantly on private-sector funding for climate-related activities, whereas in developing nations, the majority of climate finance is derived from public budgets. This finding offers valuable insight into the fact that the current strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation derived from these treaties are placing a significant strain on the fragile economies and public budgets of developing nations. Chart retrieved from the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021, by Climate Policy Initiative (Source: Buchneret al., 2021). Copyright 2021 by Climate Policy Initiative.

Now that there is empirical evidence to support the fact that the top 1% of emitters are responsible for nearly a quarter of the growth in global emissions since 1990 (Tandon, 2022), it has become evident that the Paris Agreement, which was celebrated for its breakthrough in bringing the North and South together and impose policy obligations on all countries (Dimitrovet al., 2019) and other similar UN treaties have little advocacy to climate justice amongst participating nations. Therefore, it is imperative that future climate treaties, whether they are new or amendments, focus on achieving greater climate justice at the country level.

After nearly three decades, progress seems to be finally underway as the UN General Assembly recently adopted in consensus a resolution proposed by Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific Island nation vulnerable to extreme climate effects, and youth activists. This resolution aims to “… secure a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to clarify states’ obligations to tackle the climate crisis – and specify any consequences countries should face for inaction” (Lakhani, 2023). As such, it is crucial for the upcoming COP and discussions on climate treaties to take note of such a resolution(s) and use them as a guide to prevent repeating past errors with the added pressure of limited time to achieve the 2 °C pathway to mitigate irreversible climate change effects.

It should be noted that some media outlets, such as The New York Times (Sengupta, 2023), are beginning to focus on the issue of climate justice as it pertains to developing nations, but these efforts are still relatively modest compared to the attention given to more popular climate justice topics by the mainstream media.

Climate Finance

At the Arab Regional Forum on Climate Finance held in September 2022, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations reaffirmed the commitment made during COP26 in Glasgow, emphasizing that “countries must demonstrate how they will abide by their pledge to deliver a $100 billion annually and double adaptation finance” (United Nations, 2022, para. 3). Why push for greater finance for climate initiatives? The call for increased financing for climate initiatives is backed by literature and has been widely confirmed by think tanks and development organizations globally, which indicate that “most developing countries must rely on international finance to supplement their own resources … for meeting the costs of just transitions” (Bhattacharyaet al., 2023, para. 8). Fig. 5 underscores the rationale for the significant annual budget required to maintain a 1.5 °C pathway over the next three decades, which amounts to an estimated $6,000 billion.

Fig. 5. Projected global climate finance necessary in the future to maintain the 1.5 °C pathway. Chart retrieved from the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021, by Climate Policy Initiative (Source: Buchneret al., 2021). Copyright 2021 by Climate Policy Initiative.

In practice, the situation differs from the ideals and optimistic declarations of the Paris Agreement and subsequent revisions to UN climate change treaties, which call for funding of climate protection efforts. A recent report by the Walsh School of Foreign Service (2023) at Georgetown University illustrates this reality, where a developing nation had to adopt unconventional means to secure more international climate finance. The country leveraged the threat of environmental harm by planning to lease oil and gas exploration in natural reserves to garner the required funds.

This highlights the inadequacy of current climate treaties in addressing climate finance through explicit funding and beneficiary mechanisms. In essence, there are two primary issues: firstly, there is a lack of clear definition regarding what constitutes climate finance. Secondly, there is criticism that the determination of whether a project is climate-relevant is made solely by donor countries, perpetuating the well-known funding challenges prevalent in the development industry (Velasquez Donaldson, 2019). One observed consequence of these challenges, as noted by the University of St. Gallen (2022) is that the pledged funding from industrialized nations to developing countries under the Paris Agreement falls short of expectations (2022).

In addition, existing agreements are idealistic in the sense of having overly optimistic plans that do not consider the economic and social shocks brought about by unforeseen events like the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating the fiscal strain caused by unproductive debt payments. The adverse consequences of the pandemic have also impacted donor countries and their capacity to set aside funds for climate financing in accordance with the agreements.

Policy suggestions have been proposed to address the finance gap in global climate treaties, including the use of climate and SDGs debt swaps, which entail donors and creditors forgiving portions of debt in exchange for climate funds (United Nations, 2020). The private sector has also been identified as a potential source of funding, as it has made significant financial contributions to global climate change efforts, as detailed in Fig. 6. However, according to a report published in 2013 by the International Monetary Fund (WEF, 2023a), attracting development finance for many “low-capacity” countries remains a challenge, particularly those with multiple under-developed financial sectors and prone to conflict.

Fig. 6. Average value of global climate finance flows along their life cycle for the two years 2019 and 2020. Chart retrieved from the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021, by Climate Policy Initiative (Source: Buchneret al., 2021). Copyright 2021 by Climate Policy Initiative.

The concept of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero initiative, spearheaded by COP26, involves a combination of innovative funding streams for Just Energy Transition Partnerships that go beyond traditional bank loans. This includes a mix of grants, concessional loans, World Bank loans and guarantees, as well as private-sector equity (The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, n.d.). Such an approach has compelled economists at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to shift their focus to climate change. As a result, the World Bank is currently conducting a year-long evaluation of its processes with a view to implementing reforms in the fall, while the IMF is working towards incorporating climate change into its operations (Worland, 2023). It is an ambitious plan aimed at fulfilling the goals of the Paris Agreement and paving the way for significant investment opportunities in climate projects in developing countries, which could unleash trillions of dollars in financing and accelerate the global shift to clean energy (Leimbach & Bauer, 2021).

At first glance, the plan to offer a more diverse range of funding options for directing climate finance towards developing nations seems promising. This could create a major opening for private sector investment in climate initiatives in the Global South; therefore, generating multiple benefits for both the investors and the recipient countries (Kenny, 2021). However, the actual process of distribution of grants and loans to these countries is crucial in determining the impact of such initiatives.

Hausmann (2023) presents a practical scenario where a developing country X receives billions of dollars in grant money to construct new clean-energy generation capacity. While the country does not owe anything to the new plant, it still has an old coal-fired plant it no longer uses and a previous debt associated with it. This can hinder the country from making crucial investments in other areas, such as water, education, and infrastructure. On the other hand, if the country receives a traditional commercial loan instead, it will have both old and new debts but only one plant to generate revenue for repayment. For this reason, including grants and commercial loans in the same package is akin to being economically meaningless (cf. Asakawa, 2023).

Although blended finance appears to be a promising approach for meeting climate commitments by providing a more concrete definition of climate finance, it perpetuates existing power dynamics between donors and recipients. This may limit the potential for real change if this concept is incorporated into future COP and climate treaties.

Data Transparency

Widely viewed as a successor plan to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs include fundamental progress indicators, most notably a set of measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). The SDGs comprise 17 goals with 169 targets and a total of 248 indicators. Specifically, SDG 13 alone, which focuses on climate actions, has eight indicators (SDG Tracker, n.d.), with other proxy indicators from other interrelated SDGs. This highlights the importance of having reliable reporting sources that provide real-time data to track these KPIs accurately.

Official statistics, usually generated by National Statistical Offices or an approved governmental office, are the primary source of data globally (United Nations, 2015, p. 43). However, as depicted in Fig. 7 with many tracked to a limited extent, while others are tracked very little or not at all, several KPIs cannot be collected by traditional statistical methods, such as surveys and sampling methods, due to their complex nature and the long processing times required (Tibni, 2024). In the fast-paced world, decision-makers often do not have the luxury of time and may rely on intuition and anecdotal evidence to make decisions.

Fig. 7. Tracked and untracked climate finance by sectors and actors. Chart retrieved from the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021, by Climate Policy Initiative (Source:Buchneret al., 2021). Copyright 2021 by Climate Policy Initiative.

The COP26 Climate Pact incorporates measures to enhance transparency and accountability, prompting countries to report their progress on climate change mitigation, adaptation measures, and related support (UNFCCC, 2021). To complement traditional reporting, new technologies and unconventional data sources, such as social media feeds, telecom data, and mobile phone data, offer a vast amount of information that can aid more frequent and timely SDG reporting (Smithsonian Institution, 2010). In spite of this, these unconventional data sources have not been explicitly addressed or referenced in any international treaty or global conference.

A topic that can be involved in upcoming dialogue on climate change would be citizen science, an emerging movement that has been gaining traction in recent years, driven by many official governmental offices at the local level (UNESCO, 2021), as well as the United Nations (United Nations, 2019). The concept of citizen science is based on the idea that ordinary people can contribute to scientific research and discovery by collecting data and sharing their observations (Bonneyet al., 2009). This approach can be particularly valuable in developing countries, where limited resources and institutional capacity can make it challenging to collect and analyze data (UNESCO, 2021). Many official governmental offices at the local level have recognized the potential of citizen science and are actively promoting and supporting citizen science initiatives to monitor progress towards the SDGs (United Nations, 2019).

Also, the processing of data does not currently address the issues of data privacy and security mentioned in climate treaties. It is crucial to acknowledge that efforts to protect data privacy and security cannot succeed unless policies are integrated into business processes, technology, human capacity, and culture. This is particularly significant when processing personal data, which refers to information in any form that pertains to a natural person who is identified or identifiable in line with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, 2021, p. 19). Therefore, data management must be advanced to data governance, which incorporates all these new concepts across any type of organization (Ladley, 2012). Once well-defined data governance principles are established, such as those elaborated in the Data Management Body of Knowledge (n.d.), they can be integrated into a treaty framework, enabling monitoring and tracking of key performance indicators relating to progress on climate goals.

Recommendations

While each of the sub-sections evaluating the five limitations of global climate treaties provides its own set of recommendations, a comprehensive recommendation can also be made that applies to all treaties and could provide guidance for future treaties or amendments. The premise centered around the notion that the UN needs to be the key player and compel countries to improve their performance to achieve climate goals has been argued as limited for at least the last 30 years, and an alternative approach inspired by the beneficiaries’ end is necessary for future progress in this area. A more practical approach would be to acknowledge that the UN has played a significant role in bringing us to this pivotal stage in fighting climate change by raising global awareness and bringing countries together to address the negative impacts of climate change and that going forward is up to local communities to take charge and continue on this endeavor.

This outlook to the future does not suggest a diminishing role for the UN. The local communities should take up the fight against climate change in lockstep with the wider UN initiatives, benefiting from the organization’s convening power and political influence on the topic of climate change—ever more supported by a growing body of scientific evidence. As mentioned in the previous assessment section, recommendations leveraging emerging technologies and locally-driven initiatives are particularly relevant in the 21st century (Srinivasan & Elley, 2018), as supported by novel key success factors including the most educated young generation known as Gen Z (Anya, 2017, as cited in Gomezet al., n.d., p. 9) and more countries that are increasingly having strong public and private institutions in line with SDG #16. This implies that there is now less need for a central think tank to hold all the answers, and instead, an enabling environment through policy and regulations for locally grown green innovations should be promoted in future treaties.

Conclusion

In conclusion, climate change treaties require continuous tracking and analysis to understand their evolution and impact. The Conference of Parties (COP) serves as the global mechanism responsible for overseeing and making decisions regarding the implementation of these treaties. However, the trend of discussing administrative and organizational matters has persisted, even as the adverse effects of climate change continue to grow.

The issue of free-riding has plagued climate change treaties, with many countries prioritizing their own interests over collective action. The adoption of hybrid models in global climate agreements has allowed for the private sector’s involvement in climate finance, but future climate treaties should consider local contexts and provide guidelines for creating an enabling environment for the local community to experiment with innovative solutions.

Climate justice is an essential aspect of tackling the climate crisis, and efforts must be made to ensure that the voices of the countries most economically and socially affected by climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies are heard. Increased financing for climate initiatives is crucial, but current treaties have a lack of clear definition regarding what constitutes climate finance.

Data transparency is critical in achieving the SDGs, and reliable and real-time data sources are essential for tracking KPIs accurately. The COP26 Climate Pact incorporates measures to enhance transparency and accountability, and these efforts should continue to ensure the effective tracking and reporting of progress towards achieving the SDGs, with greater recourse to sound data security, privacy, and ethics.

To achieve a sustainable future, there is an urgent need for continued efforts and action as the world faces increasingly severe climate impacts. In order to effectively address the challenges posed by climate change, climate treaties should focus on the social norms and practices of local communities and must take a more assertive approach in holding countries accountable for their commitments to combating climate change and tap into the wealth of data to imagine more future pathways to this transformation.