Liberia Significantly Increases Ambition With Revised NDC

When Liberia submitted its revised NDC on 3 August, the West African country of just 5 million inhabitants and per capita GHG emissions of less than 0.3 tonnes took important steps to raise its ambition on climate action. In the revised NDC, Liberia committed to reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 64 percent below the projected business-as-usual (BAU) level by 2030.  

This is a positive shift from Liberia’s first NDC submission, which aimed for a 15 percent reduction below the projected BAU levels by 2030. Unconditional GHG reductions of 10 percent below BAU will result in an absolute emissions level of 11,187Gg CO2e in 2030 while an additional 54 percent reduction conditional upon international support would result in an absolute emissions level of 4,537Gg CO2e in 2030.  

This commitment is constructed from GHG mitigation targets across nine key sectors—agriculture, forests, coastal zones, fisheries, health, transport, industry, energy, and waste—as well as cross-cutting targets for urban green corridors. The NDC also includes climate change adaptation targets for all sectors except industry.  

The NDC outlines a national system for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) for mitigation actions and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for adaptation actions. It also states the policy and institutional arrangement for implementation and adds an analysis of its adaptation and mitigation co-benefits, as well as the direct and indirect investment needed to implement it. 

“The Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia will ensure all sectorial line ministries and agencies of government will combine efforts to drive Liberia’s national climate agenda for the good of Liberia and for the rest of our one world, based on the Monrovia Declaration on Environment and Climate Action of June 2, 2020 in which the heads of sectoral agencies and ministries of the nine NDC sectors committed to collaborate on the implementation of the NDC,” said Prof. Wilson K. Tarpeh, Executive Director of Liberia’s Environmental Protection Agency. 

For its NDC revision, Liberia received technical assistance through the NDC Partnership’s Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) in 2020 and 2021. This technical assistance was implemented through Conservation International, which compiled and analyzed data and cost actions in various adaptation-related sectors. UNDP, through its Climate Promise, supported whole-of-society consultations, the revised NDC compilation, and NDC financing strategy development. Further support was received from EU Global Climate Change Alliance + to analyze mitigation data in the energy, transport, and waste sectors. 

With NDC Partnership support, Liberia significantly enhanced its NDC quality, building on improved data analysis which will facilitate monitoring, reporting, and verification during the NDC’s implementation phase. The NDC revision also builds upon key national planning documents, including Liberia’s first NDC (2015-2020), the National Climate Change and Response Strategy (2018), Liberia’s Second National Communication, State of the Environment Reports, and Liberia’s first Biennial Update Report (BUR).  

Liberia’s revised NDC is well aligned with the national government's Pro-poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD) and its long-term sustainable development vision for 2030 (Liberia’s Rising Vision 2030). This alignment will be crucial in facilitating NDC implementation through the public investment framework. Following the NDC submission, Liberia will focus on developing a results-oriented implementation plan through a whole-of-government approach.