This chapter analyses the perspectives of government and non-government experts on the current state of climate action. It explores their views on how far countries have come in putting the Paris Agreement into action. The chapter also takes stock of their perceptions of whether current policies match stated ambitions, whether these policies are aligned with economic objectives and with each other, and what holds back faster progress. The analysis highlights the main policy, economic, and institutional challenges to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, as these are reflected in the responses of the survey participants.
The Paris Agreement at Ten Years
Expert Views on Progress and Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation
Abstract
Understanding how well the Paris Agreement is implemented is crucial, yet difficult to measure with real-world data. Measuring the scale and effectiveness of mitigation efforts, as well as assessing whether they can set economies on a path to net zero, remains an ongoing area of research. A related body of work evaluates the social costs and benefits of mitigation policies and explores why some are not applied in practice. Despite extensive research,1 the evidence on the stringency, coherence, economic compatibility and effectiveness of mitigation policies remains inconclusive. Against this backdrop, the perspectives of government and non-government experts presented here offer new insights that can inform both research and policymaking.
Domestic views of government experts diverge from the global picture painted by climate change experts from non-governmental organisations. The median policymaker “somewhat agrees” that domestic mitigation policies are well-aligned with each other, that these policies are on track to meet the NDC targets on time and that current domestic mitigation policies are in line with ambition. The average agreement index with respect to these three statements fluctuates around 60% (Figure 4.1). At the global level, the median climate change expert “disagrees” that mitigation policies are on track to meet NDC targets on time and that progress is in line with ambition, and “somewhat disagrees” that mitigation policies at the global scale are well-aligned with each other. The respective agreement index in these questions ranges between 25% and 37%. There is some fundamental agreement that domestic climate change mitigation policies are compatible with economic objectives, which does not yet aggregate to a similar perspective from a global viewpoint. The domestic agreement index is estimated at 64% (Figure 4.1), indicating that, on average, government experts have a positive view that the policies implemented domestically are aligned with economic objectives (e.g. GDP growth, employment). As shown in Figure 4.1, this view is the outcome of similar views, as more than 3 out of 4 respondents “somewhat agree”, “agree” or “strongly agree” with this view. When climate change experts are asked to evaluate the same proposal from a global viewpoint, the overall view remains positive, but confidence subsides (52-54%). This may reflect greater uncertainty about whether mitigation policies are, on aggregate, aligned with global economic progress.
Agreement index on various statements and its breakdown
Notes: All results displayed here refer to part B.1 of the survey. Agreement index values of 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% correspond to the qualitative responses “Strongly disagree”, “Disagree”, “Somewhat disagree”, “Somewhat agree”, “Agree” and “Strongly agree”. Mean values are presented as points and standard deviation ranges as error bars. For details on the weighting of expert views see Chapter 2. All results displayed here refer to part B.1 of the survey.
Source: Graphs generated by the authors using data from the OECD survey on the transformative effect of the Paris Agreement, 2025.
Differing views may reflect sampling constraints and various international uncertainties in a time of interlocking crises. Government officials, who respond exclusively from the perspective of their country, were not asked to focus on the international context or global climate action in their responses. Therefore, the cross-country averages reported in Table 4.1 reflect the average global situation only up to the degree to which the sampling covers a representative set of countries, and the extent to which strategic responses are minimised or eliminated. By contrast, non-government experts were asked to respond to the questions displayed in Table 4.1 using a global perspective, which takes into account that achieving global commitments requires every country to converge to a Paris-aligned pathway. In this sense, the averages reported for climate change experts in Table 4.1 may reflect the uncertainties inherent to climate action at the global level during the time window of the survey. The reported figures also reflect sampling constraints, as climate change experts do not constitute a population with clear characteristics and a known geographic distribution, from which a random sample can be drawn. There may also be an inherent gap between the views of policymakers and other experts.2 Taken together, the two sets of responses provide complementary perspectives, with the current evidence suggesting a more balanced overall picture. For example, recent findings from a joint OECD and UNDP report highlight that ambitious climate action can go hand in hand with economic growth and accelerated emission reduction, when the climate plans stated in the NDCs are also implementable and investible (OECD/UNDP, 2025[1]).
A range of challenges and barriers are preventing countries from further accelerating climate change mitigation action (IPCC, 2023[2]). Government respondents were asked to score the importance of a range of domestic policy challenges, economic challenges, and domestic institutional barriers that would need to be addressed for their countries to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals (Figure 4.2). Non-government climate change experts were asked to do the same, but without a specific country focus. The responses are examined below.
Four core domestic policy challenges account for 82% of overall policymaker prioritisation, underscoring their strategic significance in shaping national policy direction and resource planning. These are: (i) providing infrastructure for the net zero transition, (ii) inducing businesses to scale up clean technology use, (iii) increasing public acceptability of climate policies and (iv) making clean technologies and products more affordable for households (Figure 4.2, top panel). All four average 18-25% of the total, with scaling up clean technology by businesses showing the strongest consensus. Non-government experts’ views are aligned (Figure 4.2, top panel), and also emphasise the importance of infrastructure provision and the adoption of cleaner technologies by firms: 29% and 22% of respondents, respectively, attributed to these the highest score. Awareness-raising is ranked lower by both groups, likely reflecting that substantial progress is already believed to be achieved.
The limited availability of public funds stands out as the most important economic barrier in the transition to net zero.3 This barrier concentrates almost one fourth (22%) of the policymakers’ allocated points, while it is top ranked by 45% of policymakers and 31% of non-government experts (Figure 4.2, middle panel). Responses also show high consistency on this item (Table 4.1). On average, policymakers assign lower scores (10-15% of their points) to several other economic barriers. These include factors hampering the mobilisation of private investment, distributional impacts of mitigation policies,4 employment-related concerns,5 as well as the cost of switching to climate-friendly consumption alternatives.6 Following at a close distance are concerns regarding the overall economic performance (e.g. GDP) and the competitiveness of the export sector, which receive approximately 10% of points each. With the exception of mobilising private capital, none of these challenges is top ranked by more than 10% of policymakers. Furthermore, the consensus on the importance of these factors is weaker (consensus index below 0.5), indicating more heterogeneous views across policymakers. The perspectives of non-government climate change experts differ only slightly from those of government officials. Experts place greater emphasis on the role of distributional impacts of climate policies, while expressing relatively less concern about export-competitiveness.7
Perceived importance of different challenges, expressed as mean score and top-score prevalence
Notes: The survey components B.2, B.3 and B.4 evaluate the relative weight of barriers to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, as perceived by the experts. In each category (policy, economic, institutional), each expert was asked to allocate 100 points across the barriers. There was no constraint on how many barriers could receive points. For example, allocating all 100 available points to a single barrier and 0 points to the rest of them is a valid response. Similarly, allocating 25 points to two barriers and 10 points to five remaining barriers is also valid. Each bar shows the mean score of a challenge, i.e. the average number of points it received from a respondent (out of the 100 available points). Each grey solid line indicates the 25th to 75th percentile range. Each yellow triangle indicates the top-score prevalence of a barrier, i.e. the percentage of respondents who ranked it as most important (e.g., 40 means 40% of respondents gave it the highest score). Government policymakers were asked to respond to the first and third question exclusively from a national viewpoint (i.e. questions read as “The main domestic policy challenges to be addressed…” and “The main domestic institutional barriers to be addressed…”). Relevant literature with respect to several of the explored barriers is provided in the endnotes of the chapter.
Technical notes: The mean score of a barrier is: , where is the score that respondent placed to barrier , and the weight of respondent ; top-score prevalence of a barrier is: , where the variable equals 1 if respondent placed the highest score on barrier (higher than any other barrier ); if barrier was placed first with another barriers; and 0 otherwise.
Source: OECD survey on the transformative effect of the Paris Agreement, 2025.
The influence from vested interests8 and the lack of mechanisms to ensure policy continuity beyond electoral cycles stand out among the set of explored institutional barriers. With the addition of resource scarcity for government agencies, these factors account for roughly 44-46% of total points allocated by experts and country policymakers (Figure 4.2, bottom panel). However, the emphasis substantially differs. For instance, while 26% of government officials top rank the lack of resources to develop climate strategies, this is not perceived by non-government experts as one of the most important institutional barriers. The divergence reflects a difference in perspective: policymakers, drawing on their direct institutional experience, give more weight to challenges that experts may be less likely to experience first-hand. For example, 41% of government respondents consider either the resource constraints facing government agencies or weak horizontal coordination across ministries and agencies as the top barrier, compared to just 19-21% of non-government experts. In addition, government respondents place more weight on the adequacy of compliance mechanisms. These contrasts suggest that while both groups agree on the structural significance of political continuity and vested interests, policymakers place greater emphasis on operational and capacity-related obstacles, whereas experts tend to highlight systemic and political barriers.
Notes: Government policymakers were asked to respond to the first and third question exclusively from a national viewpoint (i.e. questions read as “The main domestic policy challenges to be addressed…” and “The main domestic institutional barriers to be addressed…”). The consensus index has an upper bound of 1.00, which is attained if all experts allocate the same score to an option. The index attains the value 0.0 if there is substantial disagreement among experts regarding the score allocated to a factor. The index has no lower bound: the smaller a negative value is, the more substantial the disagreement. (ii) Indicative interpretations of the Gini index: values from 0 to 0.25 may indicate high consensus, 0.25-0.40 mixed views (noticeable dispersion), and 0.40-0.60 polarised views. Values above 0.60 may indicate very high polarisation (a small share of high scores drives the mean values).
Technical notes: The consensus index of a challenge is: , where is the weighted standard deviation and is the weighted mean. Indexes to measure flat responding: Average normalised Herfindahl–Hirschman Indexes (HHHI) across respondents are: 0.062 (policy barriers), 0.032 (economic barriers), 0.063 (institutional barriers) and average normalised Shannon entropy indexes across respondents are: 0.928 (policy barriers), 0.941 (economic barriers), 0.915 (institutional barriers). Both measures indicate some tendency to evenly spread points across factors, justifying the additional use of the top-score prevalence in the analysis.
Source: OECD survey on the transformative effect of the Paris Agreement, 2025.
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← 1. Several contributions track the current and expected progress on CO2 emissions reduction, as well as the degree to which pledges on current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and policies explored in various scenarios lead closer to a net-zero pathway. Such contributions include: UNEP (2023[4]), Chapter 2 (Dhakal et al., 2022[5]) and Chapter 3 (Riahi et al., 2022[6]) of the sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC, “The State of Climate Action” report by the New Climate Institute and Climate Analytics (Boehm et al., 2023[7]), the NDCs Synthesis Report as well as the outcome of the first Global Stocktake (GST1). A recent work by Stechemesser et al. (2024[8]) identifies breaks in the trends of country-specific emissions paths. Using the Climate Actions and Policies Measurement Framework (CAPMF), i.e. the OECD’s policy and climate action tracker (Nachtigall et al., 2022[9]; OECD, 2024[53]), these breaks are associated with policies introduced prior to them.
← 2. Such a gap would translate into systematically different responses between the two groups, even if they faced the exact same question. Since the latter possibility is prevented by the design of the survey, this gap cannot be estimated in the context of this work. However, it has been highlighted and measured in previous contributions. For example, in the study by Victor, Lumkowsky and Dannenberg (2022[3]) UNFCCC negotiators are much more optimistic about their country’s expected compliance with submitted NDCs than IPCC scientists are.
← 3. The fiscal requirements of the transition to net zero and their implications for public budgets have been explored, among others, by Meckling et al. (2022[40]), Riahi et al. (2022[6]), Darvas and Wolff (2023[41]), Tol (2023[37]), the IMF (2023[42]), Garcia-Macia (2024[38]), the OECD (Fouré et al., 2023[43]), Kantorowicz et al. (2024[39]).
← 4. Contributions on the distributional impact of climate or climate-relevant policies at the aggregate or sectorial level include: Tol (2001[17]), Cai, Cameron and Gerdes (2010[16]), Fullerton and Heutel (2010[15]), Rausch, Metcalf and Reilly (2011[12]), Goulder et al. (2019[13]), Markkanen and Anger-Kraavi (2019[18]), Kirchner (2019[14]), Svenningsen and Thorsen (2020[19]), Vona (2021[44]; 2023[10]) and Lindsey, Tikoudis and Hassett (2023[11]).
← 5. Some relevant contributions on the employment effects of environmental policy include Greenstone (2002[23]), Walker (2011[24]) and Mulatu et al. (2010[25]). In particular for climate policy and green energy, relevant literature includes: Wei, Patadia and Kammen (2010[34]), Ortega et al. (2015[35]), Pollitt et al. (2015[22]), Chateau, Bibas and Lanzi (2018[31]), Vona et al. (2018[28]), Vona (2019[21]), Ali et al. (2020[33]), Ram, Aghahosseini and Breyer (2020[32]), Malik (2021[29]), Marin and Vona (2021[20]), Godinho (2022[30]), Alexandri, Antón and Lewney (2024[36]), Castellanos and Heutel (2024[27]) and Winchester et al. (2025[26]).
← 6. The OECD (2023[45]) collected more than 17000 observations on household behaviour in nine OECD countries. Utilising the data from this survey, Brown (2024[49]), Hassett et al. (2024[46]; 2025[47]), and Tikoudis et al. (2024[48]) estimated the willingness to pay for climate-friendlier consumer options, including battery electric cars and electricity produced by renewables. Some contributions examine whether inflation, or the prospect of higher future consumer prices dampen the demand for climate-friendlier options. An example is the study by Jeworrek and Tonzer (2024[50]).
← 7. This finding may reflect systematic sampling differences in the two groups of observations. The sample of experts primarily represents OECD countries, which may gradually rely less on exports. Non-OECD exporters of carbon-intensive goods (e.g. steel, cement, aluminium) may feel more exposed, since exports make up a larger share of their GDP and competitiveness concerns are more acute. Otherwise, the finding could also reflect a growing recognition that competitiveness risks of climate policies can be mitigated.
← 8. This finding is fully in line with the results from the expert survey by Kornek et al. (2020[51]), which sampled 917 experts from the IPCC and the UNFCCC and studied how they perceive the importance of different obstacles for achieving 2°C. On average, respondents in that study considered the “opposition from special interest groups” as the most important obstacle: 60% of them agreed that it is at least “very important” and more than a third of them stated that it is “extremely important”. OECD (2021[52]) reflects on the challenges and risks related to the many ways special interest groups attempt to influence public policies. Findings from the OECD Trust Survey also reveal widespread public concern about undue corporate influence in policymaking, with 43% of respondents believing governments would accept harmful corporate demands, and nearly half expecting political favours in exchange for private sector jobs (OECD, 2024[54]). These perceptions are statistically linked to lower trust in national governments. Given that public acceptability is a key barrier to climate policy implementation, these insights are particularly relevant.