The 2015 Global Climate Legislation Study: a review of climate change legislation in 99 countries: summary for policy-makers

Abstract

This report summarises the main insights from the 2015 Global Climate Legislation Study. It is the fifth edition in a series dating back to 2010 (Townshend et al., 2011). The 2015 edition covers 98 countries plus the EU, up from 66 in 2014, which together account for 93 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The study is intended as a source of information for legislators, researchers and policy-makers. It is hoped that parliaments considering climate change legislation will benefit from the growing body of experience reflected in the study. Facilitating knowledge exchange among parliamentarians was one of the primary motivations behind the Climate Legislation Study when the series was conceived by the Grantham Research Institute, LSE and GLOBE International in 2010. Since then there have been many examples of parliamentarians learning from, and being inspired by, each other through forums such as GLOBE and the Inter-Parliamentary Union – the two co-sponsors of the 2015 study