GIZ and the Partnership for Collaborative Climate Action are pleased to present a Discussion Paper on how to increase ambition in NDCs through Collaborative Climate Action, titled Recover green: Higher NDC-Ambition through Collaborative Climate Action.  

A virtual launch event for the Discussion Paper took place on 16 July 2020 with inputs from Rwanda, Sweden, ICLEI and the lead author of the paper. Click here to access the documentation of the event.

During the process of researching and writing the discussion paper, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. The paper has been updated to reflect the changing conditions, not least the need to ‘build back better’. 

Current commitments to fight climate change are not sufficient. At the same time, countries, cities and regions are facing the challenge of how to recover from the Corona crisis. Any upcoming recovery packages will have to be in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. A pathway compatible with the Paris Agreement will be locked in – or not – in the aftermath of the Corona crisis. There will not be another opportunity to mobilise finance in the order of magnitude already seen since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

In 2020, countries’ plans for climate action in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) shall be renewed and/or updated. The Corona crisis has changed the conditions under which governments are operating. Many of the underlying assumptions on which NDCs are based – such as the availability of domestic budget resources, borrowing headroom or access to international climate finance, economic growth and emission trajectories – are coming into question. Travel restrictions have also pushed COP26 into 2021. On the other hand, the measures many governments were developing already for their NDCs, are an excellent basis for green Corona recovery packages. 

The Discussion Paper suggests that the following recommendations apply to the NDC update process, taking the Corona crisis into account: 

• Engage subnational government in the design of NDCs through strengthened dialogue between national and subnational government, for example through stakeholder consultations. 
• Provide fora for subnational actors to present their climate initiatives and contributions and include them in NDCs or its background documentation 
• Establish a coordination mechanism that oversees the NDC development and the sustainable recovery, to manage the process of project consideration and keep an updated list of projects compatible with the climate targets.