Climate 411

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

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 thatbolder 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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Breaking Barriers: Empowering Indigenous Voices in Global Climate and Biodiversity Decisions

Sonia Guajarara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, leads a march at COP28 in Dubai, UAE.
Photo: Estevam Rafael / Audiovisual / PR / Palácio do Planalto via Flickr

Léalo en español

This post is written by Santiago García Lloré, Senior Manager of IPLC and Conservation Partnerships at EDF.

In the coming days, major international events like New York Climate Week, the COP for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Cali, and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP) in Baku will gather world leaders to discuss solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. Once again, there will be calls to include Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in these discussions. This recognition is not just about their crucial role as stewards of forests and biodiversity; it’s about understanding that real, sustainable solutions won’t be possible without their voices at the table.

Despite all their efforts, it remains extremely difficult for IPLCs to participate meaningfully in these events. Even though Indigenous and local community leaders strive to be present and contribute to global discussions, their journey to these forums is fraught with challenges. At COP27 in Egypt, around 300 Indigenous representatives attended, and approximately a similar number attended at COP28 in Dubai. However, the impact of their presence is often limited because of the many barriers they must overcome. These obstacles make it incredibly hard for Indigenous voices to be fully heard and valued despite their significant efforts to be part of these critical conversations.

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

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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Progress to catalyze jurisdictional REDD+

Boat on a river in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest

Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo by Leslie Von Pless, EDF.

This blog post is authored by Angela Churie Kallhauge, Executive Vice President, Impact at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), with contribution from Katie Goslee, Director of Nature-Based Solutions, Winrock International; Stephanie Wang, Associate Director, Wildlife Conservation Society; Jason Funk, REDD+ Strategy Director at Conservation International; and Daniela Rey Christen, Director, Climate Law and Policy

In the fight against the climate crisis, high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ is intended to be transformational, giving forest communities and governments the ability to tap into the voluntary carbon market to access climate finance needed to ensure that large areas of tropical forests remain intact.

Jurisdictional REDD+ can deliver results, to the benefit of people, nature, and climate. Research shows that larger scale programs to pay for emission reductions from forest conservation – the scale of a whole forest region, state, or nation – are better able to ensure additionality and prevent leakage than are smaller-scale carbon programs. And larger scale programs do so for a longer period of time.

Ensuring high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ programs are fully functioning has therefore become a key priority for many actors working to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, including businesses, governments, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

One problem is that forest nations looking to establish jurisdictional REDD+ programs may not currently have the technical capacity needed to deliver high-integrity carbon credits. This is holding back their access to carbon markets, even as demand for high-integrity jurisdictional tropical forest credits seems poised to accelerate.

The task at hand is to support these jurisdictions in fully unlocking the promise and potential of high-integrity carbon markets at the rapid pace and large scale needed to address the climate crisis. We don’t have much time. If we don’t end and reverse tropical deforestation and degradation by 2030 – only six years from now – the effects could be irreversible.

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Financial Market Regulators Release Guidance Contemplating Oversight of VCM

This blog was authored by Holly Pearen, Lead Counsel for People & Nature at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Proposed Guidance from Financial Market Regulators Could Improve Integrity and Transparency in the Voluntary Carbon Market

Many of the world’s largest companies have committed to net zero, and high-quality carbon credits are increasingly seen as a key tool for meeting ambitious climate commitments. As a result, interest in voluntary carbon markets is surging: A 2023 survey found that nearly nine in 10 business leaders see carbon credits as an important component of corporate sustainability strategies. 

However, almost 40% of the companies surveyed noted that the voluntary carbon market’s “lack of regulation and transparency requirements” prevented deeper investment and indicated that improvements in price and intermediary transparency would increase their use of carbon credits as part of a wider sustainability strategy. Financial market regulators are in a unique position to directly address this significant barrier to investment and help rebuild trust, boost integrity and add critical investor protections in the voluntary carbon market.

Two proposals released in early December outline the important role of financial market regulators and offer specific suggestions for action.

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Nature is more important than ever to realizing climate goals at COP28

Aerial view: Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica

Natural climate solutions include conserving tropical forest and ocean ecosystems. Photo: Eisenlohr, iStock

This blog was co-authored by Britta Johnston, Senior Policy Analyst for Natural Climate Solutions at EDF.

Heading into COP28, nature as a climate solution has been making headlines, and rightfully so. Sustainably conserving, restoring, and managing the world’s ecosystems is one of the most powerful tools we have to meet global climate goals.

A recent study finds that restoring global forests where they occur naturally could potentially capture 226 gigatons of carbon, and 61 percent of the carbon storage could come from protecting existing forests.

We are beginning to realize the promise of protecting forests. Another report finds that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped by 22.3 percent as a result of active intervention to curb forest loss – the lowest it has been since 2018.

Moreover, advancements in policies and practices to build resilience in boreal and temperate forest ecosystems, along with strategies for mitigating catastrophic wildfire, can ensure these ecosystems remain net greenhouse gas sinks.

Oceans also have climate mitigation potential. New evidence suggests that organisms in the mesopelagic zone, a region of ocean between 200 and 1,000 meters deep containing 95 percent of ocean biomass, may trap millions of tons of carbon each year by feeding in surface waters at night and diving back down in the day.

We have better science than ever before about nature’s role as a climate solution, and signs of progress on very important fronts. That’s why nature must be at the heart of conversation and action at COP28, both inside and outside the negotiation rooms.

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Also posted in Carbon Markets, Forest protection, Indigenous People, International, Paris Agreement, REDD+ / Read 1 Response