This chapter focuses on the global decarbonisation policy gap and the need to account for measurable policies for carbon neutrality, specifically in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. One strategy to raise accountability is policy tracking, a technique that has gained traction in empirical policy analysis. The chapter introduces this technique and provides an example of a methodologically rigorous tracking of climate policies in the GCC countries in response to pledges and obligations under the Paris Agreement. This includes government policies, laws, and measures toward the mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality targets. We situate our tracker in the wider landscape of policy metrics and indexes, discuss its features, and present results on mitigation and energy policy responses to the climate crisis in the Gulf. Key conclusions are that stringency, intensity, effectiveness, and sustainability of measures vary widely across the sample and over time. Necessary macroeconomic, fiscal, technological, and social policy measures also vary greatly in terms of their intensity and the public investments made. In some GCC countries, policy measures appear to be disproportionate to the challenges linked to both reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Gulf countries’ very own nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to varying degrees.

Chapter 4 focuses on addressing climate change. International action is failing to deliver on slowing greenhouse gas emissions to keep the planet from warming dangerously, yet considerable progress is occurring by some countries, companies, states or provinces, and even cities. The chapter argues that ending the underpricing of fossil fuels is essential to a low-carbon transition. Major economies must lead by removing fossil fuel subsidies and employing carbon taxes and other policies to further reduce the social cost of fossil fuel use, and allocate any resulting revenue to public support for green innovation and key infrastructure investments. Ending the underpricing of fossil fuels in low- and middle-income countries must occur through policies that are compatible with achieving immediate development objectives, such as ending poverty and especially the widespread “energy poverty” in rural areas. Climate policies need also to expand beyond actions by national governments and instead focus on a “bottom-up” strategy that supports and expands initiatives by corporations, local governments and other “subnational” entities that are pushing and innovating low-carbon strategies.