Climate pledges versus commitment: Are policy actions of Middle-East and North African countries consistent with their emissions targets?

Carbon emission is inevitable, and changes with energy consumption and economic development, presents policy options toward sustainable development path. Currently, there is little assurance from policymakers in committing to climate change pledges: taking the Middle-East and North African (MENA) region as a specific case with using 2019 as a cut-off period. We conducted an interim assessment of the Paris Agreement to ascertain whether climate actions are in tandem with emissions reduction targets. Making use of difference-in-difference technique as a quasiexperiment supported by fixed-effects and placebo treatment models, the results point to evidence of less than 1% effective CO2 emissions reduction as of 2019 compared to the 2015 level. The current carbon emissions reduction commitment level is far-reaching contrary to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) pledged (16.43% on average by 2030 compared to the 2015 level). The analysis suggests that achieving NDCs commitments are currently major burden on policymakers since the economic development is highly linked with nonrenewable energy consumption. Furthermore, a more comprehensive framework when accounting for all available renewable and clean energy projects shows reduction levels in the range of 30%-40% from 2020 to 2030. These results suggest that the Paris Agreement in MENA countries may be more effective from 2020, thus underscore the importance of capturing ongoing projects (involving renewable and clean energy technologies) into interim policy assessment. The shared implication is that greater efforts are demanded from the region and at country levels to further decrease emissions through the use of negative emissions technologies particularly in the electricity generation sector.

Automated summary

Carbon emissions are unavoidable but can be mitigated through policy options for sustainable development. However, there is little assurance from policymakers in committing to climate change pledges, and the current carbon emissions reduction commitment level is far from sufficient. Achieving the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is a major burden on policymakers, highlighting the need for greater efforts to decrease emissions.