Barriers to achieving climate goals. An external context

Abstract

Achieving climate goals is becoming one of the most important challenges facing humankind as climate change and its consequences are increasingly evident, better documented, and disclosed in reports, successive international agreements, and at periodically held climate summits. There are two reasons behind this article: firstly, the increasingly frequent demands regarding the necessity to disclose not only the main climate goals but also intermediate climate targets; and, secondly, conclusions from the analysis of environmental goals within the framework of environmental management systems presented in our previous publications. There are certainly many factors influencing the achievement of climate goals, but the strength of their impact on the implementation of these goals varies greatly for a number of reasons. This review attempts to identify the main barriers to achieving the climate goals, especially those in organizational surroundings, without resorting to complex goal setting in applied concepts or management systems. The article focuses on the lack of a unified policy for achieving intermediate climate targets and, consequently, the main goals; importance of public awareness of risks; dominance of the short-term perspective, consequences of the absence of uniform legislation and single markets, significance of climate inequalities and climate injustice, and relevant resource and political constraints.