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.