Understanding Countries' Commitments to a Carbon-Neutral World: An In-Depth Analysis of the 2015 Paris Agreement

Abstract

In response to the growing issue of climate change, 195 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. Each country promised to submit a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and the next round of its NDC (a new or updated NDC) by 2020 and every five years thereafter (e.g., by 2020, 2025, 2030).NDCs are how countries formally commit to a low-carbon production-based and climate-resilient society, representing a progression compared to the previous NDCs and reflecting countries' highest ambitions. Although parties agreed to submit a new or updated NDC in 2020, not every country has done so. This study aims to understand the factors that may be attributed to the continued commitments to the Paris climate deal via the submission of the updated or second NDCs. We employed a probit regression analysis to determine the relationship between the submission of the updated or new NDCs and multi-dimensional factors, including socio-economic, political, and environmental factors. We find that a country with political stability but less vulnerability to climate change is more likely to submit the updated or new one. This study offers an understanding of the challenge of politically unstable but highly vulnerable countries' commitments to the Paris climate deal.