Nationally determined contribution

And quite a number of African countries are taking measures already to address these problems.

One is in terms of putting out strategies, including what are called national adaptation plans, nationally determined contributions, NDCs, and other types of plans.

Later I may have a chance to talk about the Ethiopian case where I can be a bit more specific.

We do have these strategies.

Ethiopia is one of, I think, the few leaders when it comes to addressing climate change within Africa at least.

And it is a country where we have tried to integrate climate issues with development issues.

national adaptation plans, NDCs, are well integrated into the 10-year development plan of Ethiopia, for example.

So there are attempts to address the different problems across different sectors in Ethiopia.

In addition, Bec, we saw Colombia become the first country to submit its second biennial transparency report.

That doesn't sound like a hugely exciting thing, but first, it's coming well ahead of the 31 December 2026 deadline, and it's also providing really im- important information about the country's greenhouse gas emissions, progress on its NDCs, nationally determined contribution, climate impacts and adaptation, and the support it needs for finance and a range of other topics.

And it's one of those kinds of indications that the Paris Agreement process is working, that countries are still developing their NDCs, implementing and reporting on them.

So that's sort of the good news story around the Paris Agreement, even though we know that the gaps around ambition, emissions reduction, adaptation finance remain pretty significant issues.

issues.I guess one of the things that I've seen, maybe listeners have also picked up on, not about COP31, but thinking two years in advance to COP33, we've heard or seen rumors, whispers that China is considering a bid to host COP33, which would be in 2028.

Uh, we really have to do both of the commitments together.

And there's some practical things that could be done.

So when you have, you know, NDCs with- in the, in the climate COP, we have things called NBSAPs in the, uh, in the, uh, biodiversity COP, and they're National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.

Opposition MP Rinesh Sharma questioned whether the Australian funding of US$676 million over 10 years would be enough to address Fiji's climate needs.

Dr Michael said Fiji's nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, were costed at about $4.5 billion.

He says most NDC targets were conditional on funding and other requirements.

The Northern Mariana's delegate in the United States Congress, Kimberlyn King-Hines, has proposed including the Philippines in the Guam CNMI visa waiver program.

the

other is NDC, Nationally Determined Contribution.

From 2025 to 2035 it will be NDC, and NAP by 2050.

To adapt to climate change yearly, we need $9 billion for adaptation.

This is not the only thing that has happened so far.

Just for this.

For adaptation.

For NDC and NAP.

primarily are made at the nation state level.

And things like the NDCs, you know, the nationally determined contributions and these bigger concepts like Article 6 can feel a bit abstract for business.

So the conversations we're having with our clients is really focused on what you can do and what matters to you most, right? So we're having much more actionable, specific conversations about what are their drivers of decarbonization? How should they approach things like energy diversification in a world where energy prices have been increasingly volatile, access to energy-related commodities have been frankly uneven? How to really engage and look at carbon markets and other commodity markets or nature-based solutions.

Where does that make sense within the concept of their value chain? How to really approach climate and nature resiliency within their physical and operations and value chain.

There is need to deliver the climate finance.

There is need to, to, to emphasize on the urgent need of communities to, uh, develop well-defined NDCs, Nationally Determined Contributions on climate change, well-defined national adaptation plans.

Because, again, much as we are advocating for the climate finance, for the adaptation finance, there's also a challenge, there's also a gap, there's also a gap in capacity.

Like, do we have capacity to the new solutions? Do we have capacity to adapt? Do we have capacity to handle the money? Because I believe some countries are playing their part, some countries in the Global North are playing their part.

This was on the road to COP29 in Azerbaijan.

Hmm.

We started with the research in Karamoja region, and this was a year where countries had to submit, like, their next set of NDCs.

So for us, we thought we need, we need grassroot communities to have a part in developing their NDCs, developing their climate policies, and also implementation.

And then The other thing I'll say is like I was in charge of industry.

And I think in part because the IRA is sort of remarkably the IRA, you know, we kind of created this nationally determined contribution for the Paris Agreement.

We came up with our domestic NDC.

And then like there are a bunch of nerds with spreadsheets on the Hill and in the White House trying to like, quote, find the tons.

And this is a bigger anxiety I have around like, That is A, like a not a very global way to think about a global problem, particularly in light of the fact that we no longer live in a world where every country has like a binding emissions target.

So I think calling the question of how does everything we're doing in this bill relate to global decarbonization? And maybe your theory is the U.S.

just needs to meet its NDC because it needs to be a leader, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not sure that holds anymore, frankly, but I think we should have had a clearer theory of the case of how what we were doing here related to accelerating global decarb.

So that's number one, keep what we've got.

Number two, we need to talk about this Paris commitment because in theory we are signed up to a 2019 James Shaw policy where they said, here's our nationally determined contribution, our NDC, and the Paris Agreement says that we have to create a stricter reduction every single time.

Now, I don't think that that is going to be viable for New Zealand in the long term, because if other people don't walk the walk, then we will find ourselves as the only ones who are punishing ourselves for no good reason.

So the ACT Party says that...