Welcome to the Earth.Org Global Sustainability Index, where Earth.Org examines the policies and actions regarding the environment of every nation on earth. Combining the most respected global indexes on pollution, climate change, policy, energy, oceans, biodiversity we have produced an overall Global Index, which will be updated annually. This is the Global Sustainability Index scorecard for Jordan.
The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (GoJ) submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement in 2016, setting what it qualifies as an “ambitious target” for itself. As a small developing country, it expects financial support to reach an unconditional 1.5% reduction in emissions by 2030 relative to a business as usual scenario. It also outlines a conditional outcome target aiming for a 12.5% reduction by the same date, depending the amount of support the Kingdom receives.
The climate mitigation effort will rest upon a holistic, nation-wide policy encompassing strategic objectives and measures for mitigation and adaptation. It consists in the implementation of around 70 sectoral projects aiming to provide resilience for agriculture, water access and quality, ecosystems and tourism while reducing emissions. The main challenge is curbing the high annual growth rate in energy demand, especially since the energy sector is the biggest emitter. Because it is heavily reliant on oil for power generation, it is subjected to unstable market prices making it hard to budget for the future. The current strategy is to increase natural gas’ share in the energy mix while adding in some renewables, but most importantly redesigning the transport sector with more public transport and a national railway system.
- Jordan represents a small fraction of global CO2 emissions (0.06% according to a 2010 analysis), but the Syrian refugee influx and economic growth are driving up energy demand.
- As an oil-dependent, underdeveloped country, it expects rapid urbanization in the decades to come.
- Because of this, climate mitigation targets are quite weak, committing only to a 1.5% reduction in emissions by 2030.
* Our Climate Change Ranking considers this country’s efforts toward climate change insufficient and thus has not ranked it.
** Our Energy ranking considers emission intensity (units of energy per unit of GDP). When one or both are low enough to make their influence negligible on a global scale, the country is left out of the ranking.
Global Sustainability Main Page.
References:
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Biodiversity, Policy: Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kroll, C., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2019): Sustainable Development Report 2019. New York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
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Oceans: Halpern, Benjamin S., et al. “An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean.” Nature 488.7413 (2012): 615-620.
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Pollution: Wendling, Z. A., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., Levy, M. A., de Sherbinin, A., et al. (2018). 2018 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. https://epi.yale.edu/
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Climate Change: Climate Change Performance Index; Jan Burck, Ursula Hagen, Niklas Höhne, Leonardo Nascimento, Christoph Bals, ISBN 978-3-943704-75-4, 2019
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Energy: Enerdata –World Energy Statistics – Yearbook.
World Energy Statistics
