Study shows 64 out of 66 countries had put in place or were establishing significant climate or energy legislation in 2013

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Almost 500 laws to tackle climate change have been passed in countries which account for nine-tenths of global emissions, a study has found.

Much of the action in the past year has been taken in emerging economies, including China and Mexico, while "flagship legislation" has been passed in eight countries, most of them developing nations such as Bolivia, El Salvador and Mozambique.

A further 19 countries are considered to have made progress in 2013 on climate laws in the latest Global Legislators Organisation (Globe) study, although two countries - Japan and Australia - have "backslid" and started to reverse climate legislation.

The fourth annual Globe study, co-authored by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, covers 66 countries, up from 33 in the last report, accounting for 88% of the world's emissions.

It found that 64 out of 66 countries had put into place or were establishing significant climate or energy legislation.

Whether the legislation has been inspired by the need to tackle climate change or energy efficiency, energy security or competitiveness, the laws are achieving the same end - better security of energy supplies, more efficient use of resources and cleaner, lower carbon growth, the report said.

National legislation does not yet add up to enough action to meet the goal of limiting temperature rises to no more than 2C to avoid dangerous climate change, but it is needed to form a basis for a global climate treaty which it is hoped can be negotiated by the end of 2015, Globe said.

Previous attempts to agree a binding global deal on tackling climate change failed in Copenhagen in 2009.

Globe said there was an urgent need for countries which have not passed legislation to tackle climate change to do so.

The organisation's president, Lord Deben, who is also the chairman of the UK's Committee on Climate Change which advises the government on the issue, said: "It is by implementing national legislation and regulations that the political conditions for a global agreement in 2015 will be created.

"We must see more countries develop their own national climate change laws so that when governments sit down in 2015 they will do so in very different political conditions to when they did in Copenhagen."

Baroness Worthington, Globe vice-president, said: "Overall it's been an encouraging period. On the international discussions side of things, there hasn't been a huge amount of progress, but the study shows that on the national level people are making progress."

In the US, one of the world's biggest polluters, Congress has not passed significant national climate change legislation, but Baroness Worthington said it was hoped that as the impacts of global warming got worse, the US would take more and more action at a city, state and federal level.

And she said: "Our study shows there's a growing body of countries taking this seriously."

As a result, clean technology development was set to continue to grow, creating a "lobby on the side of the angels" which opposes those, including in the UK, who fight against action to tackle climate change, she suggested.

Globe is launching a new international initiative, the Partnership for Climate Legislation, to help legislators across the 66 nations develop, advance and implement climate change laws.