Fig. 1: Timeline of submissions of Long-term national climate strategies to the UNFCCC Secretariat or European Commission, categorised by region.

Regions based upon the United Nations M49 standard ‘Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use’ for region or sub-region. Dates are publication by the UNFCCC Secretariat, except for Estonia which is the date of submission to the European Commission. Strategies published in French or Spanish which were not analysed, are shown in grey. ‘COP 26’ refers to the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Glasgow, United Kingdom. ‘Submission date’ refers to the submission period detailed in Decision 1/CP.21, paragraph 35. ‘Paris Agreement’ refers to the date of adoption, the agreement later entered into force in November 2016. Omitted are the publication dates for strategies made obsolete by the publication of a more recent strategy by the same country. This applies to the USA (previous strategy: November 2016), France (previous strategy: December 2016), the UK (previous strategy: April 2018) and Japan (previous strategy: June 2019).