NDCs: What is there for Latin American Big Cities?

The purpose of this series of events, entering now its third year, organized in collaboration between the Regional Programme on Energy Security and Climate Change in Latin America of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (EKLA-KAS) and the International Institute for Sustainability (IIS) is to help selected national and local governments in Latin America to strengthen a dialogue process to align the national NDC with existing municipal government plans and initiatives on climate change, which may have synergies with others.

We started this task (first in 2017 and then in 2018) focusing on mitigation of climate change by countries and (mega)cities in Latin America. In 2019, we invited around 15 Latin American countries to participate and exchange information on adaptation and vulnerability plans in their countries/cities. Therefore, the objective of this third part of the project was to support countries and cities to assess their vulnerability to climate change and prepare and strengthen their respective adaptation plans.

While the mitigation agenda is more present among the richer and more developed countries, the adaptation agenda is of greater interest to the poorest and smallest countries, as they are known to be particularly vulnerable to the events extreme climatic.

The historic success of the Paris Agreement is credited to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the countries responsible for more than 95% of global emissions. Different countries have proposed different strategies and approaches to reduce emissions. In the vast majority of cases, NDCs were determined only by national governments.

By placing representatives of various institutions and government agencies in the region at the same table, it was possible to achieve the objective of incentivizing dialogue between the different levels of government for the implementation of the NDC, once the discussion allowed a better understanding of the structure of governance in the countries at the local, regional and national levels. In this way, it was possible to analyze the progress and challenges for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the climate plan of these countries and to appreciate the number of policy initiatives for reduction greenhouse gas emission rate. We have seen a great interest of our partners and in the end about 35 people participated in the workshop, coming from 12 different countries (including Brazil). The information gathered in this workshop will be available in a final study soon.