Scale
National
Resource Type
Guidance and Frameworks
Expertise Level
Practitioner
Specialist
Language
English
Developer or Source
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
World Resources Institute (WRI)
To set the course for a net-zero emissions future, the historic 2015 Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees C, and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C.
Yet the national commitments made at Paris were not adequate to reach these temperature goals. To strengthen them, the Agreement set up a mechanism to enhance ambition for climate action over time, requiring each country to prepare and communicate nationally determined contributions (NDCs) every five years to reflect its highest possible ambition.
In line with these five-year cycles, the COP decision at Paris requests all countries to submit NDCs by 2020. The 2018 decision at COP24 in Katowice, Poland, reiterated this time frame.