The Drivers and Constraints of Global Climate Ambition: an Analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the drivers and constraints of global climate ambition through explaining the variance in ambition among the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the 2015 Paris Agreement. The analysis builds on earlier research into the determinants of NDC ambition and the explanatory factors of change in NDC ambition, developing a set of domestic explanatory variables. Additionally, the design of the Paris Agreement as a catalytic institution and an instrument of soft governance inspires the inclusion of international variables that have been theorised to influence climate ambition, such as regional and learning effects. As of the time of writing, 393 NDC documents, both active and archived, have been made available on the UNFCCC NDC registry. These, combined with prior research into the NDCs analysing their ambition levels, provide on one hand a wealth of data for analyses into the general determinants of ambition levels, taking each NDC as a datapoint. On the other hand, the data allows to explain the change in NDCs per Party to the Paris Agreement. Through statistical regression analysis, this paper aims to untangle the variance in NDCs and find the drivers and constraints of this variance between parties, among parties, and through time.