Why is the Gambia the world’s ‘climate leader’?

Six years after it was signed into existence, only one country in the entire world is currently on track to meet the demands of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

That country is the Gambia in west Africa, which also happens to be the continent’s smallest mainland country.

According to research compiled by Climate Action Tracker (Cat), the Gambia is the only one where official government action, alongside its internationally supported targets, are compatible with keeping global average temperature rises below 1.5C since the pre-industrial era.

But is all as it seems? How is it that this tiny nation, one of the poorest in the world, with an agricultural and tourism-based economy and unresolved human trafficking issues, is leading the field when it comes to low climate impact and sustainable targets?

It is largely because due to the small economy, existing emissions are not high, and the country has signalled it is already largely working to cut those.

The Cat assessment has so far been applied to 37 countries, and provides ratings on a wide range of actions countries are taking to address the climate crisis.

These include: an overall rating, the domestic target, policies and action, fair share, climate mitigation finance – either on providing mitigation finance, or detailing what international support is needed – and land use and forestry.

But while the rating suggests the Gambia is storming away as an international leader on clean, green policies and action, the real reasons it is at the top of the index are more complex.

According to the Cat, the country has “an ambitious conditional emissions reduction target that would bend its emissions downwards”, however it notes that despite this, “its current policies are not on track to meet this target”.

The assessment indicates the country will need to implement more stringent policies to meet its emissions reduction targets, and that in order to do so it will require additional support.

Nonetheless, the country has implemented a major renewable energy programme centred around solar power.

It is increasing its renewable energy capacity with a total of 170 MW in solar power projects in the between 2021-2025, which is partly being financed by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.

Meanwhile, the Gambia’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen overall, though this is largely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The analysis suggested the country’s emissions in 2020 will be around 5.7-7.4 per cent lower than in 2019.

But this fall is accompanied by “severe socioeconomic consequences”, chiefly due to fewer tourists coming to the country.

“As with the rest of the world, short-term emissions have decreased due to the economic standstill,” the Cat analysts wrote in a detailed breakdown of their assessment of the Gambia.

“Heavily dependent on tourism, the country’s GDP growth is projected to decline by 2 per cent to 3.1 per cent in 2020 compared to a growth of 6 per cent in 2019.”

Perhaps bizarrely, as well as indicating considerable emissions reductions in the near future, the Gambia is also pursuing new oil opportunities.

The country has set oil extraction targets in order to stop importing oil by 2025. In 2018, the Australian oil company FAR started drilling the Gambia’s first offshore well in 40 years, and in 2019, the Gambian government signed another deal with BP to explore oil and gas off its coast.

Nonetheless, because of the country’s existing low emissions and its pledges to cut emissions further, it remains at the top of the list.

Professor Niklas Höhne, analysis author and founding partner of the NewClimate Institute in Germany, told The Independent: “The Gambia is the only country of the 37 that we analyse that is compatible with 1.5C. This means that there may be others, but we have not analysed them all.

“With our rating method a country like Gambia gets a good rating, as their contribution to the climate crisis so far is very limited and one would not expect immediate emissions reductions. Nevertheless they have suggested that they can reduce their emissions substantially, if international finance is available.”

He added: “The good rating is in part the circumstances of the country and in part their willingness to do more.”

At the other end of the scale, the researchers warned that countries including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Mexico, were all failing to take action to address the climate crisis.

Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, one of Cat’s partners, said: ​​“Of particular concern are Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland and Vietnam: they have failed to lift ambition at all, submitting the same or even less ambitious 2030 targets than those they put forward in 2015. These countries need to rethink their choice.”