G20 performance on climate change

Sustainability is at the heart of South Africa’s 2025 G20 presidency. South Africa has stated that the next five years of G20 governance are critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by their 2030 deadline. The 2025 progress report shows only 35% of the SDG targets are on track to be met by 2030. SDG 13, Climate Action, showed a “global failure to meet climate goals” in 2024, with emissions reduction goals still weak, trillions of dollars still subsidising fossil fuels instead of climate financing, and consequently heat and disasters increasing. The G20 has paid more attention to climate change over the decade, but its performance remains uninspiring. For progress to be made, it will have to come from the bottom up. 

Deliberations

Since 2008, G20 summits have given an average of 9% of their declarations to climate change. 

Their first 11 summits, from 2008 to 2016, gave less than 5% at all but one summit, for an overall average of 3% per summit.

The next four summits, from 2017 to 2020, were almost consistently above 10%, for an overall average of 9% per summit: the 2017 Hamburg Summit gave 10%, 2018 Buenos Aires gave 5%, 2019 Osaka gave 10% and 2020 Riyadh gave 12%.

The next four summits, between 2021 and 2024, jumped to an overall average of 26%: the 2021 Rome Summit gave an unprecedented 31%, 2022 Bali gave 22%, 2023 New Delhi gave 27% and 2024 Rio de Janeiro gave 23%. The G20 has sustained attention to climate change while facing other demanding crises, namely pandemics, war, declining democracy and economic volatility.  

Decisions

Since 2008, the G20 has made 180 commitments on climate change, averaging 5% of the total per summit. From 2008 to 2016, the G20 averaged 3% of its commitments on climate change per summit. From 2017 to 2020 it averaged 5%, and from 2021 to 2024 it averaged 10%. The highest portion on climate change was 16% at the 2024 Rio Summit – double the previous two summits (2022 and 2023 with 8% each) and nearly double the two highest performing summits (2019 and 2021 with 9% each). 

Delivery

G20 members’ compliance with the 53 climate commitments assessed by the G20 Research Group since the first in 2009 averaged 73%, just above the all-subject average of 71%.

Between 2008 to 2016, compliance averaged 70%. Between 2017 and 2020 it averaged 73%, and between 2021 and 2023 it averaged 86%. By May 2025, compliance with the two commitments assessed from the 2024 Rio Summit was 73%. 

Causes

There is a paradox between these rising deliberations, decisions and delivery on the one hand and their impact on the other: how can G20 climate action be advancing while progress towards SDG 13 is making such little progress, if not backsliding? What does this say about the quality of the G20’s climate commitments if high compliance with them is, in effect, ineffectual? These are questions to be empirically explored, but, regardless, strengthening the ambition of G20 commitments will at least send a stronger signal to the global community about where the policy winds are blowing.  

There is a correlation between embedded ministerial support and compliance. From 2009 to 2018, when no environment and climate ministerial meeting was held, compliance with the leaders’ commitments averaged 70%. From 2019 to 2023, when there was a ministerial meeting, compliance averaged 82%. The environment and climate ministers can work to mobilise their bosses to raise the ambition of the commitments they already comply well with.

The G20 demonstrates strong verbal support for UN Climate as the core climate governance body, averaging 84% compliance with commitments that reference the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, these commitments are often very general with loose parameters for achieving compliance. The G20 should continue to strongly support the UNFCCC while taking advantage of the G20 forum to smooth relations among G20 members that represent competing negotiating blocs under the UNFCCC umbrella.  

The G20 can also strengthen its commitments by including short-term deadlines, which already have higher compliance: commitments with a six-month or shorter timetable averaged 85% compliance, while the one with a one-year timetable had 50% and the one with a multi-year timetable had 43%. 

The G20 can link climate action with the other SDGs, in keeping with the focus of the Johannesburg Summit. This would advance co-benefits, such as intersections between climate change and gender, health and poverty reduction. Moreover, G20 climate commitments that also broadly reference sustainability averaged 73% compared to 68% for those that did not. However, the G20 should ensure specificity to increase impact: it should name the specific SDG it seeks to link with SDG 13. 

No progress is possible without climate financing. The financial powerhouses of the G20, which mobilised trillions of dollars for the 2009 global financial crisis and helped coordinate action on vaccines within months for the Covid-19 pandemic, can have the biggest impact. Yet climate finance is its weakest area, averaging only 64% compliance. To reach the SDGs by 2030, including SDG 13, the G20 must get serious about transferring the trillions it gives to fossil fuel companies to lifting up the people running the small enterprises, subnational governments and civil society on the front lines of the climate emergency who can get the job done with the right backing and support.