A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. NDCs are at the heart of the Paris Agreement which aims to hold the global average rise in temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius; thus avoiding the projected rise from 2.9 to 3.4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to establish NDCs and update these every five years.

WWF-Pakistan has played a key role by holding around more than 90 face to face consultations with stakeholders from the agriculture, forestry, industrial, waste and energy sectors at the provincial level to determine which ongoing or in-pipeline projects contributed towards GHG emissions reduction and climate change adaptation.

These consultations helped to identify current best practices regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation, and delineate proposed plans of action for each sector to enhance the effectiveness of current best practices, introduce new measures that have demonstrated success elsewhere, and recommend interventions to prioritize for Pakistan to meet its NDC targets. 

WWF-Pakistan has also conducted provincial level stakeholders’ consultative workshops to raise NDCs ambition and to discuss how each key sector can benefit from implementing climate action plans. More than that, these consultations acclimatized and created awareness amongst the relevant sectors about NDCs and subsequently increased the acceptance for the implementation of mitigation and adaptation actions mentioned within the document.

It also highlighted the key challenges faced at each level that hinders the smooth implementation of climate oriented actions and also the recommendations on policies, finance and communications that can overcome these barriers on the current practices, the targets set within the current NDCs and their achievability.