Climate 411

Closing emissions gap with 2025 NDC Revisions: Critical Opportunities for Climate Action

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: October 28, 2024

The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2024 presents stark findings on the state of global climate action. Current pledges would only reduce emissions 4-10% below 2019 levels by 2030 – far short of the 42% reduction needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. These gaps are corroborated by the Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement Synthesis report by the UNFCCC secretariat, which noted that “bolder new climate plans are vital to drive stronger investment, economic growth and opportunity, more jobs, less pollution, better health and lower costs, more secure and affordable clean energy, among many others benefits.”

While these gaps are alarming, we have the solutions to address them. In fact, the report reveals a crucial window of opportunity as countries prepare their next Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for submission in 2025. Through immediate, decisive action on NDCs, we can bridge the gap and put ourselves back on track to 1.5. 

Reflecting on the report recommendations, these are three strategic areas to help bridge the gap in countries’ updated NDCs:  

  • First, comprehensive investment planning must become central to NDC development. Countries should include detailed project pipelines that identify specific, bankable projects aligned with sectoral transformation pathways. These plans should outline clear implementation timelines, risk mitigation strategies, and resource requirements. Critically, they must demonstrate how public finance can leverage private investment at the necessary scale.  
  • Second, NDCs must strengthen coverage and transparency across all sectors and gases. Particular attention should focus on methane emissions, where rapid reductions could have immediate climate benefits. Many countries have encouragingly incorporated methane into their NDCs – the 2024 NDC synthesis reports suggests that 91% of parties cover methane within their mitigation targets. However, only 5% of parties have specific quantified methane targets, demonstrating a significant area for improvement. 
  • Third, countries must reimagine climate finance through a just transition lens. This means moving beyond simple volume targets to emphasize finance quality: its accessibility, predictability, and alignment with development priorities. For developing economies, which require an eight to sixteenfold increase in climate investment by 2030, NDCs should clearly distinguish between unconditional actions and those requiring international support. They should also outline specific measures to ensure transitions benefit vulnerable communities and workers. 

Elements for NDC enhancement in 2025

The upcoming NDC revision cycle is a rare opportunity to fundamentally reshape climate ambition and action. By focusing on these three areas – comprehensive investment planning, enhanced sectoral coverage and transparency, and quality climate finance for just transitions – countries can develop NDCs that not only raise ambition but also chart practical pathways for implementation. 

The solutions and financing approaches exist to close the emissions gap. What’s needed now is the political will to deploy them at unprecedented speed and scale through this critical NDC revision process. 

 

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To meet our climate goals, we need climate plans backed by science and economics

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: September 30, 2024

As countries make their way to Baku, Azerbaijan to attend COP29, the annual United National climate conference, we have a clear challenge. Currently, the climate commitments made by countries are not ambitious enough to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

COP29 is our moment to meet this challenge head-on, where countries can align on what needs to happen to meet our global climate goals.

Next year, countries will update their national climate plans under the Paris Agreement for 2025-2030—and the urgency to accelerate climate action has never been clearer.  These climate plans are called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and they need to be ambitious enough to meet the pace and scale demanded by science. 

Building on global lessons and efforts towards global solutions 

Responding to this global call, the NDC Partnership and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) launched a joint Climate Investment Planning and Mobilization Framework. The Framework aims to create a common language for diverse stakeholders to communicate priorities, needs, and challenges in mobilizing climate finance. 

This framework underscores the fundamental importance of strong evidence-based decision-making in revising and enhancing NDCs. Commitments need to be ambitious—but  also realistic, achievable, and aligned with the latest scientific understanding of climate change and its impacts.  

At Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we believe in working and building on the efforts of partners. For decades we have worked to bridge science, economics and policy to drive forward practical solutions to some of our thorniest challenges, from cutting methane pollution to halting deforestation, which puts us on. We’re working to build on this record of advancing science and economics-backed NDCs by contributing new research, innovative tools, and solutions that are grounded in evidence, which uniquely positions us to Use evidence-based decisions for NDC 3.0 Revisions.  

How to Use Evidence-based Decision-Making for Impactful NDC Revisions  Read More »

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Lessons learned: New climate and biodiversity funds don’t need to start from scratch

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: June 20, 2024

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, Associate Vice President, Global Climate Cooperation, and Zach Cohen, Senior Analyst, Global Climate Cooperation 

As we face the triple planetary crisis of climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss, the need for urgent and united action is undeniable. Addressing these linked challenges demands more than just ambition—it requires collaboration, guided by the principle of complementarity. This approach emphasizes working together in harmony to achieve greater effectiveness and sustainability in our efforts to protect the planet.  Read More »

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Bonn 2024: Laying the Groundwork for Global Climate Action from Baku to Belém

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: May 31, 2024

Authored by Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, Associate Vice President for Global Engagement at Environmental Defense Fund 

The international climate community is convening in Bonn, Germany, for the 60th sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies of the UNFCCC this June—and they will set the tone for the next year of global climate engagement. The sessions in Bonn are a vital mid-year checkpoint and a precursor to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

Discussions in Bonn, hosted at the UNFCCC headquarters, will prepare for the critical negotiations that will unfold in Baku and subsequently in Belém, Brazil, at COP30. 

Although this year’s COP29 is projected to be smaller in scale than past years due to spatial and financial constraints, it will be no less consequential: Participating countries must come together to finalize a critical agreement: the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. This new finance goal is anticipated to significantly shape how countries can realistically implement their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)–each country’s national climate commitments—due in 2025.  

Given the major milestones lined up for COP29 and COP30, the June sessions in Bonn need to set the tone for heightened ambition and climate progress, especially on the complexities of climate finance, policy coherence, and equity. 

Here are our top themes to watch during Bonn, and how EDF is working to support a positive outcome: 

Setting a New Climate Finance Goal

The NCQG will be essential for enabling effective climate action globally, with a strong focus on supporting the needs and priorities of developing countries. As negotiations unfold, the objective is clear: to promote ambitious and achievable financial commitments that will help scale climate action and provide a clear trajectory toward the 2025 NDCs and beyond. 

By establishing this new finance goal, the international community seeks to ensure that every country has the necessary support to implement effective climate solutions, thereby fostering a more equitable global approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

  • EDF is actively participating in the dialogues around the new goal, and submitted suggestions calling for ambitious, quality financial commitments and a transparent process to support effective implementation of the goal. 

Ensuring Equity in Climate Action

A significant focus will also be on the Just Transition Work Programme, which aims to embed the principles of a just transition into global climate policy frameworks. It’s about ensuring that the shift towards a low-carbon future is equitable, supporting sustainable development that benefits all sectors of society without leaving anyone behind. 

  • EDF recently published our Just Transition and Safeguards Framework, which offers a roadmap for countries and companies alike to successfully navigate the complexities of transitioning to clean energy while ensuring fairness and equity at every step of the way. We’ll be working to socialize the EDF framework’s guidance as countries engaged in the Just Transition Work Programme continue their deliberations. 

Accelerating Action on Food & Agriculture

Food was on the table at COP28, as the conference opened with a declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems, and climate action endorsed by 159 countries. Negotiations will resume with renewed momentum in Bonn. The goal is to accelerate action on climate resilient practices that ensure food security and address environmental impacts effectively by 2025, and to review and enhance country commitments, including through enhancing NDCs, developing specific investment pipelines, and unlocking various forms of finance. 

  • EDF is engaging with stakeholders and partners aiming to accelerate both climate mitigation and adaptation in the global food and agriculture sector through finance. This includes supporting farmers’ livelihoods, climate-resilient food systems, and environmental protection. 

Making Progress on Article 6: Advancing Cooperative Implementation

While there was a lack of progress on Article 6 forms and reporting procedures at COP28, implementation of the mechanism is proceeding at the national level. This year, we’ve already seen the first notifications of transactions under article 6.2 continue to deliver high-integrity climate action. Since COP28, countries aiming to work together on climate action through carbon markets have signed 13 new bilateral agreements. 

Efforts to operationalize Article 6.4 will focus on key decisions left over from COP28, particularly on the development of methodological guidance and on the crediting of removals under this mechanism. The Article 6.4 Supervisory Board has made progress since COP28 on other significant issues, such as the consideration of sustainable development benefits and the establishment of a grievances and appeals procedure, heralding potential renewed willingness to reach solutions from different negotiating partners. 

Establishing robust international market and non-market cooperative approaches will be essential for funding and facilitating global climate action, aiming to overcome previous impasses and enhance economic sustainability.  

  • While EDF will be monitoring Article 6 developments closely, our active engagement will be shaped by the progress and direction of these discussions. We aim to ensure Article 6 can serve as a high-integrity tool to deliver an efficient flow of financial capital from the Global North to the Global South to meet their Paris Agreement goals. Read more about our Article 6 perspective here.  

Treating Our Oceans as Critical Allies in Climate Mitigation

Discussions in Bonn will also cover marine biodiversity conservation, coastal resilience, and innovative financing for ocean-based climate solutions, recognizing the integral role of oceans in the broader climate regulation framework.  

  • EDF plans to participate in the oceans and climate change process, building on our involvement in the climate action outcomes related to oceans at COP28. We worked in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to announce the Aquatic Food Breakthrough for 2030: a goal to provide at least US$ 4 billion per year to support resilient aquatic food systems that will contribute to healthy, regenerative ecosystems and sustain the food and nutrition security for three billion people.  

Strengthening Partnerships with all Actors

Participating countries are not the only ones responsible for climate action: progress depends on cooperation with all non-state actors. That is the ethos of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action (MP-GCA), a platform for coordinated climate action between governments and non-state actors like companies, communities, Indigenous Peoples, faith communities, and more. In the MP-GCA, High-Level Champions (HLCs) lead efforts to turn ideas into action and foster collaboration on projects that can seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make the world more resilient to climate change impacts. 

  • At EDF, we share this “everyone in” mentality: we believe in activating everyone on climate, from businesses to communities to governments. In Bonn, EDF will focus on our work with the High-Level Champions (HLCs) and the sectoral leads of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action (MP-GCA). By collaborating with other non-state actors and the private sector, EDF aims to drive collective progress and amplify our impact on global climate initiatives. 

The Road to COP30: Making it to Belem, Brazil

As we move from these Bonn climate talks to COP29 in Baku and onward to COP30 in Brazil, the discussions set the stage for crucial global climate action. These negotiations, enriched by Brazil’s focus on nature and forests, are pivotal as they coincide with significant global environmental conventions, including the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), with its own COP happening in October in Colombia. Each conference is an opportunity to forge policies that harness natural ecosystems for climate mitigation and adaptation. 

  • During Bonn, EDF will be engaged in discussions on forest conservation efforts through the Jurisdictional REDD+ Technical Assistance Partnership (JTAP), an initiative to support jurisdictions and local partners to participate in high-integrity voluntary carbon markets to catalyze tropical forest conservation and finance at scale.  

A successful outcome at COP depends on incremental collective progress throughout the year. Bonn is a critical moment to connect the dots between the upcoming moments for global climate engagement. Whether discussions focus on biodiversity, desertification, finance or just transition, weaving together the common threads and finding the synergies between them is key to taking actions that solve for multiple problems and benefit climate, communities, and ecosystems all at once.  

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Financing Solutions for Slow Onset Climate Challenges: Drawing on Nature’s Untapped Potential

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: May 8, 2024

Protecting and restoring mangrove forests are cost-effective nature-based solutions to buffer coastlines from the impacts of climate change. Photo: Environmental Defense Fund

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, Associate Vice President, Global Climate Cooperation and Zach Cohen, Senior Analyst, Global Climate Cooperation 

Climate change isn’t just about sudden disasters. Creeping issues like biodiversity loss, rising sea levels, and desertification are slowly reshaping our world, often relegated to the background in the face of more immediate climate emergencies.  

These long-term challenges are known as slow onset events (SOEs). They place new pressures on communities to adapt through measures such as disaster preparedness, while also leading to losses and damages (L&D) – the impacts of climate change which occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts. 

While the international community has made important progress to address the impacts of SOEs – including launching a new Loss and Damage fund to assist vulnerable countries in preparing for and responding to SOEs – the reality is that financing for slow onset events remains severely lacking. Many countries are struggling to secure the resources needed to address these monumental environmental dilemmas.  

In order to prioritize tomorrow’s issues today, we must rapidly scale up finance to tackle SOEs. The L&D fund will play a key role on this front – it recently held its first board meeting, and as it gears up to provide financing to those in need, it must do so in a way that optimizes public resources to maximize impact and leverages the solutions already provided by nature. 

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Latin America’s Climate Challenge, and Opportunity

By Juan Pablo Hoffmaister / Published: October 24, 2023

This blog is co-authored by Sergio Sánchez, Senior Policy Director of Global Clean Air; Edgar Godoy, Associate Vice President of Jurisdictional Partnerships; Santiago Garcia, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Relationships Manager; and Erica Cunningham, AVP of Latin American Fisheries and Oceans.

Scene from the Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week 2023 opening ceremony. UNclimatechange via Flickr.

This week leaders and climate stakeholders from throughout Latin America are meeting in Panama to discuss climate action, and the strategies and finance needed to climate-proof the continent. It’s not an easy task in a region facing multiple challenges, from political instability to insecurity to stunted economic growth in many countries.

Climate change is already making life even more challenging for many vulnerable people in Latin American and Caribbean. Communities throughout the region are grappling with sea-level rise and extreme weather events that occur more frequently. The largely man-made destruction of natural resources, like the Amazon rainforest, will intensify the impacts of climate change, and the impact of climate change is creating further pressure in the ecosystems and their degradation. Yet enforcement of conservation efforts alone is not enough for a problem that is economic in nature.

Mitigation and adaptation strategies will look different from country to country in this highly diverse and mega biodiverse continent. However, they all share some common threads: the need for climate finance, capacity building, and technology transfer, among others.

The opportunity for climate action

A successful climate strategy for Latin America will also solve other problems. Efforts to conserve the region’s rich natural ecosystems must happen alongside efforts to safeguard vulnerable communities against climate impacts. At Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week, the region’s leaders and climate stakeholders will have the opportunity to collaborate and advance discussions on climate policies that address multiple issues for both mitigation and adaptation. Climate financing, both from rich countries and the private sector, will need to be scaled up for solutions to work.

EDF’s delegation at Climate Week will engage and collaborate with the region’s climate leaders from government, civil society, Indigenous and local communities and other stakeholders, on critical topics including clean air, forest conservation, food security, and resilient oceans and coastal communities.

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Posted in Carbon Markets, Extreme Weather, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Indigenous People, International, REDD+, United Nations / Comments are closed