Mitigation efforts are taking place within developed as well as developing countries. There is a need to identify these efforts, and figure out where there is potential to increase ambition at the national level so that all countries can work towards reducing emissions.

During CoP 19 in Warsaw, this line of thinking emerged within the UNFCCC as the ‘intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)’. All countries were urged to prepare these well in advance of the CoP 21 in Paris. It is the first time such an ex-ante process has been formally adopted under the UNFCCC. This has led to clarifying concepts, help in revisiting historical precedents and outline a form of way forward. Countries had to undergo a domestic process of capturing existing contributions. This had to be coupled with political commitment and agreement from within all the relevant line ministries, and other stakeholders.

Consistently leading on climate change from the LDC group and setting international standards, Bangladesh was very keen to lead the way on the INDCs as well. CDKN supported the Government of Bangladesh to initiate the process at the national level, and to submit the national commitments on climate action to UNFCCC in September of 2015.

This project aimed to:

1)  Provide the Bangladesh Government with a robust ‘baseline’ that incorporates all mitigation and adaptation related efforts undertaken by the country to date

2) Prepare mitigation potential projections until approximately 2030 using baseline information

3) Support in drafting the technical language of the submission (INDC) to the UNFCCC

4) Extract agreement of key stakeholders on the elements of the INDC that will be submitted

Publication

CDKN supported Government of Bangladesh in developing their Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), a pioneering exercise that was undertaken by 184 nations till December 2015 to feed into the global post-2020 climate deal. The unique process followed brought clearer understanding on the requisites for implementation of Paris Climate Agreement 2015, as well as wider reflections on the challenges and opportunities facing Governments around the world when translating climate plans such as INDCs into action. The observations and reflections of the project team; Ricardo AEA has been captured in a learning paper which can be download from here and a blog which can be accessed here. 

CDKN Funding: £150,000