A NEW international report highlighting Australia’s inaction on climate change is likely to intensify international pressure on Australia, the Climate Council said today.

The 2015 Global Climate Change Legislation study, released by the UK Grantham Institute on Climate Change and Environment, said Australia had become the first developed country to take a legislative step backwards from action on climate change.

Meanwhile globally, legislation to tackle climate change has surged with climate laws almost doubling from 426 in 2009 to 804 by the end of 2014.

Australia has also no framework to cope with climate change impacts such as bushfire and sea level rise, the report noted.

Australia is expected to face a grilling from the international community this week at a mid-year meeting of the UN Climate Convention in Bonn, Germany, where government representatives will have to stand up and justify Australia’s climate change actions to date.

The international forum in Bonn highlighted that the rest of the world was paying close attention to Australia’s climate change policies, Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said.

“Australia has fallen way behind on climate change action. We have a pollution reduction target of 5% by 2020 while the US is on track to meet its 17% target by the same date,” she said.

“We are out of step with the rapidly accelerating climate change commitments worldwide and the message from the international community is clear- they expect us to do our part.”

The report can be accessed here.

The Climate Council is an independent, crowd-funded organization providing quality information to climate change to the Australian public.

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