Progress Made Since Copenhagen Accord

The annual Climate Competitiveness Index (CCI, download executive summary 2010 as PDF), produced by the independent non-profit institute AccountAbility in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), launched today at the Business for Environment summit in South Korea. The 2010 Index analyses 95 countries responsible for 97% of global economic activity and 96% of global carbon emissions.

The CCI combines two sets of data to investigate "Climate Accountability" to validate if a country's climate strategy is clear, ambitious and supported by stakeholders, and "Climate Performance" to consider each country's capabilities and track record on delivering its strategy.

The CCI finds that despite gaps in performance and accountability, 46 per cent of countries assessed since the UNFCCC Copenhagen conference in December 2009 have demonstrated some improvement in climate accountability. Thirty-two countries have made significant improvements, with Germany, China and Republic of Korea being the outstanding examples. India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and Rwanda have also enhanced their climate accountability.

Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Japan and France show the most consistent progress on combining accountability and performance. Switzerland and Austria are strong on climate performance, while the UK and USA are strong on climate accountability. Republic of Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia are developing good strategies and the BASIC nations (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) are making progressing towards climate competitiveness.