Foreign
PARTIES to the Paris Climate Agreement are required to submit updated national climate plans or Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs, every five years to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, secretariat.
The second iteration of the NDCs was reviewed at the first Global Stock-take, GST1, at COP 28. GST1 demonstrated that the world was well off-course to meet the 1.5 degrees target of the Paris Agreement, with the aggregated impact of all the NDCs putting us on course for close to 3 degrees warming by the end of the century. GST1 thus mandated parties to the Paris Agreement to develop updated and more ambitious NDCs (NDC3.0) and 10-year plans, and to submit them to the secretariat by 10th February 2025, including the targets for 2035.
However, by Monday, 10 February 2025, only 13 countries globally had met this deadline. From the African region, only Zimbabwe made its submission on time. Other countries that met the deadline include Marshall Islands, Singapore, Saint Lucia, Andorra, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Uruguay, United States of America, Ecuador, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
The African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) congratulate Zimbabwe on this achievement and are honored to have supported Zimbabwe in updating and communicating its NDC3.0. ACPC will continue supporting other African member states in this process in the lead up to COP30.
Given the urgency of the climate emergency, it is disappointing that only 13 out of the 195 signatories to the Paris Agreement have communicated their national contributions to the climate response. We also note that it is not sufficient for parties to communicate NDCs, adequate finance should be made available to enable their implementation if humanity is to have any realistic chance of preventing irreversible interference with the climate system.
In this regard, we note that countries must submit their plans by September at the latest to ensure they are included in the NDC Synthesis Report to be released ahead of Brazil’s COP30. ACPC will support African member states to update and communicate their NDC 3.0 and Long-term low emissions development strategies in this timeline. In addition to supporting countries to reformulate their NDCs, ACPC will also participate in assessments to ensure the alignment of communicated NDCs with the recommendations of GST1, and with a 1.5°C trajectory. ACPC and UNECA will continue to explore mechanisms and instruments that can be deployed to mobilize the required finance to implement NDCs.
16th February, 2025.
C.E.
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