Late last month, the UN Environment Programme released a sobering report. Global ambition to fight climate change has “plateaued,” the report finds, and current commitments from world governments could mean as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century—blowing past the goals set in the Paris Agreement. With storms, heat waves, sea level rise, and other events hitting nations around the world with less than 1.5 degrees C of warming, the consequences of inaction would be disastrous.
The time to act is now. World governments, the report finds, “must deliver a quantum leap in ambition in tandem with accelerated mitigation action in this decade.”
COP29 will be the first indicator of whether or not governments are heeding these warnings. With just a few weeks left to go before the UN climate conference in Baku, countries are under increasing pressure to show that they are upholding international commitments to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy, and double energy efficiency.
Experts have outlined ten key tests for these upcoming plans that will determine whether leaders can take action to ensure resilient development and long-term economic stability — and, in doing so, keep the Paris Agreement alive.
At the UN General Assembly in September, the United Kingdom, Brazil, UAE, Azerbaijan said that they will release their new national climate plans by the end of the year, making them the first countries to announce these commitments. All countries are required to release their updated plans, known as nationally-determined contributions, by February. What’s inside of the first set of these commitments will be a first indicator to whether global leaders are committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C, the more aggressive target set under the Paris accords.
Nationally-determined contributions, or NDCs, are commitments made by countries under the Paris Agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. Each country determines its own contribution based on its national circumstances and capabilities.
“Ambitious, credible NDCs are an essential blueprint to reduce greenhouse emissions and keep the 1.5 degrees C mission alive, while driving economic growth and job creation,” said Kaysie Brown, Associate Director on Climate Diplomacy and Geopolitics at E3G.
In September, a coalition of 20 leading civil society organisations—including groups representing scientists, business leaders, think tanks, cities, youth, health experts, and more—sent a letter to world leaders outlining the 10 basic requirements all NDCs need to meet in order to keep the world on the right track. Each NDC, the letter states, must pass ten important “tests”, including making an explicit commitment to end fossil fuel expansion (which is just a follow through to promises made last year in Dubai), setting economy-wide and sector-specific targets, and detailing plans to triple renewable energy capacity.
“If done well, [NDCs] can address and tackle core challenges of poverty and economic insecurity,” Brown said. “For these opportunities to materialise, progressive governments must demonstrate bold leadership now. This means fostering ambitious commitments on NDCs and pushing for ambition from others, not as a nice to have but as a must have, in order to unlock the highest level of opportunity both domestically and globally.”
Investors are also paying attention to the NDCs: the We Mean Business coalition, which works with corporations around the world, is a signatory of the letter. Corporations are looking for indicators from leaders to help them form their plans through the end of the century. Submitting a NDC can send a strong signal to global industries that governments are serious about green investments; not crafting a strong NDC, by contrast, is a missed opportunity.
A 1.5-aligned NDC “is an incredibly important policy document,” said Fiona Duggan, the Global Sustainability Senior Manager at Unilever. “But we don’t want them to just be policy documents. We want them to be five-year investment plans. We want them to be something real.”
A key focus of the upcoming COP will be on climate finance: making sure that wealthy countries commit to providing enough funding to help developing countries build resilience to climate impacts and invest in the energy transition.
“With the full implementation of NDCs, global emissions could still peak before 2030,” a new NDC Synthesis Report, also released last week, finds. “To achieve that peak, however, the conditional elements of the NDCs need to be implemented, which depends mostly on access to enhanced financial resources and technology transfer.”
In 2022—two years past the initial deadline—developed countries agreed to provide more than $100 billion each year, a historic amount that still doesn’t come close to what’s truly needed. A successful outcome for an agreement in Baku depends heavily on countries agreeing to an aggressive new finance goal. Accordingly, the experts’ letter reminds developed countries that their NDCs need to reflect a significant scaling up of finance for a just transition: a test they could make significant progress on at COP29, ahead of the February deadline.
Other tests in the letter include strong actions to protect vulnerable communities from climate impacts; clear and transparent accounting, free of “deceptive metrics”; measures to protect and restore ecosystems; and a commitment to address emissions from food systems and support farmers.
It’s also crucial that these new NDCs be backed by policies at the country level that can bring them into reality. According to the new NDC Synthesis Report, published in late October, just half of countries have indicated that they “have integrated their NDC targets, goals and policies into national legislative, regulatory and planning processes.” In July, the UK’s independent advisory body on climate change found that just a third of the country’s emissions reductions targets were covered by existing legislation or policies. Just crafting an NDC that passes the ten tests isn’t enough for success: leaders must then back these commitments up on the national levels.
There are some warning signs that the first countries to release NDCs may not meet some of the key ten tests. In Dubai last year, countries reached a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. But an analysis of industry data by Oil Change International, released in September, shows that the COP Presidencies Troika—Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil—are on track to increase their combined oil and gas production by 33% by 2035. The data shows that the UAE and Brazil are on track to increase production by 37% and 38% respectively by 2035. Azerbaijan, which is currently tasked with delivering a successful outcome at COP29 in Baku in November, is on track for a 4% increase. Meanwhile, Climate Action Tracker rates Azerbaijan’s climate plans as “critically insufficient” after it scrapped its 2030 emissions target.
“Claiming to lead on climate while continuing the expansion of oil, gas and coal production is indefensible at this point,” “Governments need a plan for reducing reliance on fossil fuel production. The bare minimum is ending new exploration licensing. This is the moment to get serious about the carbon budget.”
For civil society keeping an eye on these NDC leaders, aggressive action is the only option.
“Global temperature rises mean that communities around the world are facing devastating floods and wildfires, oppressive heat waves, the spread of vector-borne disease, droughts that drive hunger and thirst, and widespread mental health impacts,” said Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Ambitious NDCs are vital for the planet and for human life.”
