Posted on June, 09 2024

The masthead picture of WWF’s updated NDCsWeWant website, shows a herd of African elephants on a journey across a dry lake bed in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Like this herd, countries have a journey to make to achieve the Paris Agreement. They map this out through national climate plans, which spell out how a country will reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Nationally Determined Contributions, or ‘NDCs’ - are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. It requires every country to establish an initial national climate plan and then to update it every five years, starting from 2020. So far, all 193 countries who signed the global treaty had issued at least their first NDC by 2 November 2022. The next deadline for countries to update and submit these national climate plans is 2025.

As things stand, there is a long way for countries to go. According to the UN Climate Change, the global body presiding over the Paris Agreement, climate actions countries have committed to so far are not enough to keep temperatures to a safe level. The main reasons countries are not yet on track to meeting the Paris Agreement goals could be reflected, as political will and climate finance.

Feasibility’, (whether it is possible and affordable to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement) is not a barrier to countries. There are already many strategies and activities reflected in national climate plans which can get countries to ambitious reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This ranges from shifting cars and vans to electric power, to shifting energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards 100% renewable energy. These technologies are readily available to governments. They are cheap and continuously improving in efficiency and cost. Putting these in place can ensure an increase in the quality of living. Installing solar and wind power, for example, is cheaper and more cost-effective than investing in oil and gas. And renewable energy does not affect air quality or create unhealthy work environments.

WWF’s updated NDCsWeWant Checklist provides a benchmark to measure improvements from one NDC to the next, The newly published Checklist helps increase transparency on how countries respond to a core principle of the Paris Agreement: Each successive nationally determined contribution must have stronger climate ambition and action than the previous one, in accordance with their national circumstances.

Changes and additions to the revised NDCsWeWant Checklist broadly reflect WWF’s two calls on countries to:

• Update current commitments, in addition to making new ones: this is necessary to get back on track sooner rather than later and will reduce the irreversible losses in nature already underway as a result of climate change impacts. For this reason, we also introduce ‘tipping points’ to our expectations.
• Set out their response to the outcomes from the most recent stocktake (‘the first Global Stocktake’) identifying the gaps which need to be filled by countries, and the cost-effective strategies that can achieve this. WWF recognizes that there is no one size fits all, but the global milestones are clear and must be met. Countries should be clear on strategies and timelines to support global milestones as fossil fuel phase out, and halting and reversing deforestation.

We invite all countries to make full use of the Checklist in their revision processes.