Nationally Determined Contributions and Long-Term Strategies

Nationally Determined Contributions and long-term strategies

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Paris Agreement (Article 4, paragraph 2) requires each Party to prepare, communicate and maintain the NDCs that it intends to achieve. NDCs represent each Party’s national climate change adaptation and mitigation commitments, as well as support needs in terms of capacity-building, technology development and dissemination and finance.

A FAO analysis of NDCs has revealed the critical role of the agriculture and land use sectors in achieving countries’ mitigation and adaptation goals over the next decade and beyond. Overall, 95 percent of countries’ new or updated NDCs include mitigation and/or adaptation goals, targets or actions in the agriculture and land use sectors.

More about NDCs

FAO Member States have publicly pledged to make their NDCs a reality, but this requires planning, investment and cooperation between multiple stakeholders from grass roots to government level. FAO supports its members and partners by strengthening the formulation and implementation of the NDCs with ambitious climate action in the agriculture and land use sectors, particularly linking NDC implementation to National Adaptation Plan and long-term strategies.

The FAO publication, ‘The agricultural sectors in nationally determined contributions (NDCs): Priority areas for international support', outlines key types of support developing countries will require to effectively implement and report on their agricultural sector commitments, and ultimately scale up climate action in the coming years. The sequel, 'Turning Nationally Determined Contributions into action' outlines the related support FAO can offer. FAO has written a series of global- and regional-level reports, analyzing the role of the agriculture and land use sectors in the NDCs and opportunities for NDC enhancement.

FAO has also developed several tools to strengthen countries' capacity to prepare, implement, effectively report and update their NDCs and national adaptation plans:

Enhanced Transparency Framework

Partnering to scale up NDC implementation

FAO has been an active partner of the NDC Partnership since its launch in 2016 and is now extensively collaborating on NDC Partnership initiatives and supporting countries in developing, implementing, tracking and revising their NDCs. FAO provided support to 21 countries under the Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) in response to countries’ technical requests to enhance ambition and accelerate implementation of their NDCs in the AFOLU sectors.

In addition, FAO hosts the Secretariat of the Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Agriculture, Food Security and Land Use under the NDC Partnership is a country-led peer to peer network for countries and international organizations to consult one another and to share experiences and challenges related to climate change impacts and the implementation of NDCs in the agriculture sectors. FAO facilitates the TWG together with two co-chairs, Australia and Uruguay. The group now has over 60 members and is open to all interested NDC Partnership member countries and organizations.

Publications

Regional Analysis of NDCs in Sub-Saharan Africa

2022

46 out of the 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) submitted a first nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention...