No country is doing its share to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius this century, according to the publishers of the Climate Change Performance Index 2012.

Presenting their report on the sidelines of climate talks in South Africa, the environmental organizations Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe (CAN Europe) said the top three slots of this year's index were left blank to demonstrate a lack of leadership.

Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany ranked four, five and six, to displace last year's leader Brazil for taking actions to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Iran ranked worst.

Best of the bunch

"Sweden is performing relatively well because they have low emissions and an emissions trend that is going down," said CAN Europe Director Wendel Trio.

Christoph Bals, who helped assemble the index for Germanwatch, said Germany gained one notch thanks chiefly to a new energy policy introduced this year.

"This improvement is due to Germany's 'energy transition', and the fact that there's more dynamism in the renewable sector," Bals said.

"On the other hand, Germany is still not on a trajectory that agrees with a two-degree goal," he added.

Though European countries tended to score well, Croatia, Poland and Turkey all fell in the rankings due to poor assessments of their national policies.

The Netherlands displayed one of the biggest slips on the continent, dropping 12 places because of an increase in emissions.

The report's authors would prefer to see European Union countries unconditionally raise the block's target to a 30 percent cut in emissions on 1990 levels. The current goal is 20 percent.

Poor performers

The index ranks the world's 58 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Rankings are determined by a combination of total emissions, trends and an assessment of domestic actions.

China and the United States, which account for 40 percent of the world's emissions between them, ranked 57 and 52 respectively.

CAN Europe Director Wendel Trio described China, the world's biggest polluter, as a "special case" due to its combination of soaring emissions and high investment in renewable energy.

"China is putting in place a number of very good policies…but at the same time we don't see these policies having an impact yet," Trio said of the decision to rank the country so low.

In contrast, Trio said there should be "no surprise" about the position of the world's number two polluter, the United States, due to its high per capita emissions and "no real federal policies in place to tackle" them.

Australia, another of the world's leading per capita emitters, jumped 10 places to rank 48 thanks largely to the introduction of legislation this year aimed at putting a price on carbon.

Deforestation could cost Brazil

India dropped 13 places to 23rd despite having among "the best" per capita emissions – fewer than two tons per person per year compared to around 20 tons for North Americans.

"But similar to other big developing countries, the emission trend in India is very worrying, because they have [rapidly] rising emissions linked to the strong rise of their economies," Trio said.

Brazil, another rising economy, fell from grace this year, dropping three rankings to come fourth due to an increase in emissions from energy production.

It could also dip far further in future: Germanwatch says it intends to include emissions from deforestation in its calculations as of next year.

"If that would be the case Brazil would obviously be ranked much, much lower," Trio said, suggesting that the controversial review of Brazil's forest code currently underway will likely result in higher levels of deforestation.

So far, a lack of data has made it too difficult to include deforestation in calculations for the index.

Author: Johannes Beck
Editor: Nathan Witkop