NDCs and their Impact

NDC Pavilion at COP24

The landmark Paris Agreement calls for each country to organize and make known their post-2020 climate commitments. These commitments are known as NDCs or Nationally Determined Contributions. In a conversation with Taylor McCord, a Communications and Marketing Specialist for the NDC Partnership Support Unit, she explained that a NDC is essentially a country’s effort to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. NDCs have become critcial baselines for tracking what each country is actually doing to lower carbon emissions. Within the NDC, there are five categories that each country can use to identify ways in which they will reduce their emissions and explain how these emissions reductions will be reported. These reporting measures are important, as they will show whether or not countries are actually meeting their commitments. Done correctly, these measures can build confidence among governments, investors and other stakeholders, and spur a scaling up of global climate actions. In a presentation conducted by Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy and Water, he demonstrated through a series of visual data that the first round of NDCs (established in 2016) lacked clear enough reporting procedures to provide a pathway for reaching the Paris Agreement’s long term goals. 

Paris Rule Book Side Event 

Prior to COP24, the total commitments of all the countries’ NDCs do not show that the 2 degrees C goal  will be met. Two official reports that have been recently released by the United Nations have shown that the NDCs’ commitments are insufficient to limit global warming to 2 degrees C. This means that countries, like Switzerland, who said that they would reduce emissions by 50%, still need come up with even more ambitious plans if the global objective is to be reached. However, nations like the US and Russia, who are two of the biggest polluters, will only commit to reductions of only 26% and 28%.

The rate at which our climate is changing is undeniably alarming. Even though it is possible to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals, every year countries have fallen behind on their promises. This will have an adverse effect on the rising sea levels, elevated temperatures and melting glaciers. If countries do not implement what they have promised, Climate Change could become irreversible and impossible to rein in.