Introduction
On the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were introduced by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 attempt to combat numerous different economic, environmental and social issues, so there can be a sustainable future for everyone. The goals vary from Zero Hunger to Life Below Water; however, this paper will concentrate on reviewing Goal 13 – Climate Action. The issues the goal seeks to address, perspectives of the issue as well as how successfully implemented the goal is both abroad and in the United Kingdom will be reviewed. The focus of this paper will be on target 13.2 of Goal 13, which is the integration of climate change methods into national policies/law (which can be found in the appendices).
Problems Goal 13 Seeks to Address
Climate change is a huge issue which collectively involves many other environmental problems as well as linking into social and economic ones. Some issues are, for example, sea level rise, rising temperatures and increased droughts/flooding, which have knock on affects such as loss of habitat and danger to life. When considering that global temperatures are actively increasing and ‘Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade’ (Voiland, A. 2018) It becomes clear that climate change is an ever-present danger and requires action.
Specifically, target 13.2 has an indicator 13.2.1 in which it aims at increasing the amount of countries which have introduced policies and laws that mitigate against climate change issues (see appendices), as although there had been a 20 fold increase in number of global climate laws since 1997, this had slowed since a peak in 2009 (Evans, S. 2017), therefore it is clear there is room for improvement. And when considering President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on 1st June 2017 (Tollefson, J. 2017), more problems arise than are fixed, so there has never been a bigger need for more climate laws/policies.
Perspectives of Climate Change
The way governments view climate change can have dramatic affect on how well mitigated climate change is, especially if the country is developed and/or has a large population. For example, a 2015 survey by Pew Research Centre uncovered that the United States ‘has the highest carbon emissions per capita, but it is among the least concerned about climate change and its potential impact’ (Wike, R. 2016) seen in Figure 1. If this was an undeveloped country such as the Philippines, it may not be much of an issue. However, as the United States is one of the most developed countries in the world with one of the largest populations, this will have impacts on climate change. Especially considering Donald Trump 2 years after the survey decides the USA will withdraw from the Paris agreement. However, the USA withdrew from the Paris agreement only formally, meaning some states will still uphold the agreement; showing two different perspectives within a single country.
International Context: Australia
Since the SDGs were introduced in 2015, they have been implemented across the globe, as for target 13.2, some countries have integrated more climate change related policies than others. Australia is a country doing very well in terms of achieving climate change related goals, as they are on track to meeting their own 2030 target and have a record of meeting and beating their own emissions targets. Additionally, Australia have invested $23.9 million into a climate change hub as part of the National Environment Science Program. (2017, Review of Climate Change Policies)
Due to Australia’s sheer size the types of climate related problems the country is prone to, to merely suggest a few climate related policies for an entire country would be unwise. Therefore, certain local governments within the country had decided to create policies which best suited their area, such as in coastal areas of Newcastle, preventing flooding risks was top priority. (Forino, G., Von Meding, J., Brewer, G., & van Niekerk, D. 2017) However, since Australia’s newly elected prime minister has come into power, the country’s policy to cut greenhouse-gas emissions has been abandoned, despite there being no new significant policies to reduce other sources of pollution (Morton, A. 2018). This shows how, although there may be a significant contribution towards goal 13’s policy target in Australia, work is not yet complete, and more policies are still needed to achieve the SDGs targets.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, there has been a strong government approval of trying to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Being one of the first countries to introduce a ‘risk-based approach into climate change legislation’ to address unavoidable climate change impacts (Howarth, C., Morse-Jones, S., Brooks, K., & Kythreotis, A. 2018), the UK has always been focused on attempting to reduce the effects of climate change. Already having the Climate Change Act of 2008 based on ‘decarbonisation’(Campbell, D. 2015), to additionally contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals shows the attitude the UK has on climate change. However, since 2015 there has been a slash in numerous green policies, claiming they were too expensive (Anti-science fears for UK.2017), which shows how within the UK there is still a difference in viewpoints and that it would be much more likely that the UK government will stride towards achieving their own climate goals as opposed to the goals of the UN Sustainable Development Programme.
Conclusion
In summary, the introduction of the SDGs has been of great aid in helping structure countries’ ability to mitigate against climate change across the globe, especially for target 13.2 in the likes of Australia where policies are formed individually to an area to minimise risk to people. However, when compared to the likes of the United Kingdom it would seem that although the government agrees to follow through with the SDGs, it would be more likely that they will prioritise their own climate-based goals first. Therefore, I conclude that based on the comparison of international and local context, the implementation of Goal 13 was good; however, could be improved upon to make it a top priority for climate change mitigation in countries across the world.