Regional Analysis Of The Nationally Determined Contributions In Latin America

The main objective of this report is to provide a regional synthesis of the climate change mitigation and adaptation commitments in the agriculture and land use sectors set forth in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of countries in Latin America and to identify opportunities for enhancing mitigation and adaptation ambitions, capturing their synergies and leveraging climate finance and international support options in the region. It aims to guide FAO – and policy makers and practitioners in the region – committed to providing the country support required for accelerating progress on and scaling up NDCs in the agriculture and land use sectors, and ensuring that future commitments are clear, quantifiable, comparable, transparent and ambitious.

The twenty-second session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22), the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12), and the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 1), were held in Bab Ighli, Marrakech, Morocco, from 7-18 November 2016. The Conference showed how the world is making progress for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and how the constructive spirit of multilateral cooperation on climate change continues. Governments have set until 2018 to complete the Paris Agreement application standards, in order to ensure trust, cooperation and success in the upcoming years and decades. The agreement adopted at COP21 came into force on November 4, 2016, and, this way, countries have ratified their commitment to struggle to keep the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees centigrade and to achieve an economy free from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions until the second half of this century. Within this context of challenges and considering the principles, provisions and structures of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the countries have filed documents on their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC). This analysis and systematization study examines the INDC documents from 32 Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) States.

This report provides a unique, sector-specific synthesis of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from Latin America. It summarizes the substantial contributions already put forward by countries, opportunities for further action and the gaps, barriers and needs that will need to be addressed if the agriculture and land use sectors in Latin America are to raise mitigation and adaptation ambitions. The findings of this report will help member countries to reflect on their progress in advancing toward NDC priorities for agriculture and associated national climate goals including related targets under the SDGs. The analysis also helps to clarify the links between the NDCs from the region and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). Finally, the report serves as a guide to FAO, as well as other international actors, for the support that will be required to help countries in the region to move forward to implement agriculture and land use sector priorities in their NDCs and ensure that future commitments from the agriculture sector are quantifiable, verifiable and sufficiently ambitious.

The main objective of this report is to provide a synthesis of the climate change mitigation and adaptation priorities in the agriculture and land use sectors set forth in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of countries in the Pacific and to identify opportunities for governments to strengthen their sectoral mitigation and adaptation ambitions, capture synergies and accelerate progress on the sustainable development agenda.

The regional analysis provided in this report reflects the dynamism and diversity existing within Asia. Asia is experiencing dramatic demographic changes, high population growth, urbanization and growing economic inequities. The food system in the region varies significantly between and within its many sub-regions in terms of climate, landscapes, ecosystems and farming systems. All of these factors provide the context for climate action at the national level and have shaped to some extent how agriculture is reflected in countries respective National Determined Contributions. This report provides a unique, sector-specific synthesis of the NDCs from Asia. It summarizes the substantial contributions already put forward by countries, opportunities for further action and the gaps, barriers and needs that will need to be addressed if the agriculture sector in Asia is to raise mitigation and adaptation ambitions. The findings of this report will help member countries to reflect on their progress in advancing toward NDC priorities for agriculture and associated national climate goals including related targets under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis also helps to make clear the links between the NDCs from the region and the ongoing work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in support of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA).

The agriculture and land use sector (crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture) hereafter referred to as the AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) sector for ease of reference – features prominently amongst the adaptation and mitigation contributions set forth in the nationally determined contribution (NDCs) – up to 96 and 88 percent, respectively (FAO, 2016a). This paper presents a step-by-step methodology for assessing the overall coverage of mitigation and adaptation policies and measures in the NDCs, as compared against major greenhouse gas (GHG) emission “hotspots” and adaptation “hotspots” in the AFOLU sector. It also provides a gap-filling methodology for estimating economy-wide and sector-specific baseline and NDC mitigation scenarios based on regional trends. The overall objective is to support national policy makers in NDC review and revision processes so as to better align or integrate mitigation and adaptation policies to address sectoral GHG and adaptation hotspots. To date, the sector-specific methodology has been adopted by FAO to conduct a series of mitigation and adaptation policy coverage in the NDCs at the regional-level, including Eastern Africa (FAO, 2017), Europe and Central Asia (FAO, 2019), Asia (FAO, 2020b) and the Pacific (FAO, 2020c), Latin America (FAO, 2020d) and the Caribbean (FAO, 2020e).

This report provides a unique, sector-specific synthesis of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in the Caribbean. It summarizes the substantial contributions already put forward by countries, opportunities for further action and the gaps, barriers and needs that will need to be addressed if the agriculture and land use sectors in the Caribbean are to raise mitigation and adaptation ambitions. The findings of this report will help member countries to reflect on their progress in advancing toward NDC priorities for agriculture and land use and associated national climate goals including related targets under the Sustainable Development Goals.

This paper presents a sector-specific framework for better understanding the role of the AFOLU sector in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) at the country and aggregate level. It is designed to facilitate the stocktaking and analysis of national climate change mitigation and adaptation priorities, barriers to implementation and support needs specific to the AFOLU sector in order to inform country programming and guide the flow of external support. It can also be used at the country-level to facilitate NDC enhancement and encourage compliance with the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) of the Paris Agreement. As such, it is directed at national policy makers sitting in ministries of environment, agriculture, finance and social planning, as well as at international and non-governmental organizations, development agencies and banks and finance institutions. To date, the framework has been adopted by FAO to conduct a series of regional-level analysis of the role of the AFOLU sector in the NDCs.