Staff Writer
Zimbabwe has distinguished itself as the sole African nation to meet the February 10, 2025 deadline for submitting its updated national climate plan, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat.
Parties to the Paris Climate Agreement are required to submit updated national climate plans or NDCs every five years to the UNFCCC secretariat.
The second iteration of the NDCs was reviewed at the first Global Stock-take (GST1) at COP 28. GST1 demonstrated that the world was well off-course to meet the 1.5 degrees target of the Paris Agreement, with the aggregated impact of all the NDCs putting us on course for close to 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century.
GST1 thus mandated parties to the Paris Agreement to develop updated and more ambitious NDCs (NDC3.0) and 10-year plans, and to submit them to the secretariat by February 10, 2025, including the targets for 2035.
By February 10, 2025, only 13 countries globally had met this deadline. From the African region, only Zimbabwe made its submission on time.
Other countries that met the deadline include Marshall Islands, Singapore, Saint Lucia, Andorra, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Uruguay, United States of America, Ecuador, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
The African Climate Policy Centre congratulated Zimbabwe on this achievement adding that it is honoured to have supported Zimbabwe in updating and communicating its NDC3.0.
The African Climate Policy Centre said it will continue supporting other African member states in this process in the lead up to COP30.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said that given the urgency of the climate emergency, it is disappointing that only 13 out of the 195 signatories to the Paris Agreement have communicated their national contributions to the climate response.
“We also note that it is not sufficient for parties to communicate NDCs, adequate finance should be made available to enable their implementation if humanity is to have any realistic chance of preventing irreversible interference with the climate system,” UNECA said in a statement.
“In this regard, we note that countries must submit their plans by September at the latest to ensure they are included in the NDC Synthesis Report to be released ahead of Brazil’s COP30.”
The African Climate Policy Centre will support African member states in updating and communicating their NDC 3.0 and long-term low-emissions development strategies in this timeline.
In addition to supporting countries to reformulate their NDCs, the African Climate Policy Centre will also participate in assessments to ensure the alignment of communicated NDCs with the recommendations of GST1, and with a 1.5°C trajectory.
The African Climate Policy Centre and UNECA will continue to explore mechanisms and instruments that can be deployed to mobilise the required finance to implement NDCs.
