Dec 202020
 

This article was first published at NDC Partnership website on 17 Dec 2020, and co-authored with Abhishek Yadav and Sneha Pandey.

This month, Nepal joined an exemplary group of nations in submitting its second national climate plan on the eve of the Paris Agreement’s fifth anniversary. Nepal’s improved and high quality NDC is estimated to cost USD28.4 billion, or over 90 percent of GDP.  The updated commitments draw on lessons captured while implementing its ambitious first pledge in 2016 to reaffirm its commitment to the Paris Agreement.

The 2020 NDC features legal, institutional, and financial frameworks, reliable cost estimates, and likely financial and economic implications. The Himalayan nation’s high-quality climate plan is data-driven with high emphasis on sound data collection and reporting methodologies.

NDC Partnership members were among the first to support Nepal’s 2020 NDC enhancement on both mitigation and adaptation targets. Through the Partnership’s Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), Climate Analytics led sectoral assessments of electric transport, electric cooking, forestry, modelling, and cost-benefit analysis of targets. Nepal also provides a variety of Information for Clarity, Transparency, and Understanding (ICTU) of mitigation components. This includes quantifiable information on the reference points, timeframes, periods of implementation, scope and coverage, planning processes, assumptions, and methodological approaches.

Continue reading »

 Posted by on December 20, 2020 at 12:54 pm
Oct 142020
 

This article was  first published on Climate Analytics website on 19 May 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic adds yet another shock to the multiple challenges that more than a billion people living in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) already face in day-to-day life. It is much more than a health crisis. It has the potential to create devastating health, social, economic and environmental crises that will leave a deep, long-lasting mark. However, it is an opportunity to adopt and implement sustainable solutions during the recovery process, also for LDCs, without losing sight of the climate crisis.

Solar panels on a farm in Rwanda. ©Water for Food, CC BY-NC 2.0

More in the series of blogs on coronavirus pandemic impacts on climate-vulnerable countries:

Facing Covid and climate Pacific island capacity stretched by Paddy Pringle
Coronavirus underscores small islands climate vulnerability by Adelle Thomas

A worsening situation

The coronavirus crisis has affected work, business travel and lifestyles around the world and has exacted an unprecedented human toll as underprepared health systems struggle to cope and workers in lockdown lose their livelihoods. However, the insufficient infrastructure and fragile health systems make the situation in LDCs even more difficult.

According to the World Health Organization, maternal mortality rates in LDCs remain around double that of the global average. An estimated 47% of deaths in LDCs overall are caused by communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional conditions, compared to 22% globally. In terms of emergency preparedness, the WHO confirms that 44 LDCs experienced a health emergency or outbreak between January 2015 and October 2016.  These were due to natural disasters in 26 countries, conflict or humanitarian crises in 16 countries and disease outbreaks or epidemics in 40 countries.

Health systems in LDCs are currently unable to cope with the rapid increase in new cases of COVID, and these countries lack the resources to cope with the socio-economic consequences of lockdown, the only practical solution until a vaccine is available.<

As the coronavirus pandemic has hit major sources of revenue, many LDCs – already economically weak – are struggling to balance their books and to allot resources to fight the health crisis on top of other challenges.

COVID-19 adds on to climate change impacts

For many LDCs, COVID-19 and climate change have conspired to make their situation even more difficult. Even during the pandemic, climate change continues to threaten the health and safety of people in the LDCs. Continue reading »

 Posted by on October 14, 2020 at 11:18 am