Today marks the beginning of UNFCCC COP26, and Parties to the Paris Agreement are gathered in Glasgow to discuss opportunities to strengthen and scale-up their climate action to achieve the Paris goals, in line with their national climate commitments: the Nationally Determined Contributions – or NDCs. While strong ocean-based climate action should not substitute drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all land- and sea-based sectors, the protection and restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems offer key opportunities to advance global climate goals and contribute to the Paris Agreement. For that reason, the Ocean & Climate Platform, together with key partners, has looked into Parties’ submissions to assess the extent to which countries have harnessed the mitigation and adaptation potential of coastal and marine ecosystems, by including coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions in their NDCs.
Deep-dive: what role for coastal and marine ecosystems in national climate strategies?
The first revision cycle of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) offers a key opportunity for Parties to the Paris Agreement to update, assess and review their national climate commitments, as each successive NDC is required to showcase increased ambition relative to the previous submission (Article 4.3 of the Paris Agreement) [1]. Therefore, this revision cycle can be approached as a chance for Parties to further harness the potential of coastal and marine ecosystems in their climate strategies to effectively ratchet up ambition.
In that regard, the Ocean & Climate Platform released a report today, drafted in collaboration with key partners, which sets out to review all new or updated NDCs (i.e. submitted up to 21 October 2021) [2]. The aim? To assess how and the extent to which countries have included coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions (NbS) [3] in their NDCs. In a context of growing attention to the ocean in climate strategies, this report clarifies whether Parties have increased, renewed, unchanged or decreased their ambition with regards to the inclusion of NbS in coastal and marine ecosystems between first and updated NDCs.
An overall increased ambition for coastal and marine ecosystems in updated NDCs
As outlined in this report, countries have further recognised the ability of coastal and marine ecosystems to advance climate mitigation and adaptation objectives in line with the Paris Agreement. There is an overall increase in countries’ level of ambition with regards to the inclusion of coastal and marine NbS as part climate mitigation and adaptation measures [4]. Half of the countries that submitted their updated NDCs have increased their ambition relative to first NDCs, since 58 out of 113 countries [5] added new coastal and marine NbS for either mitigation or adaptation purposes between the two submissions.
Note: Key findings and data outlined in this report are also available on a dashboard, jointly produced by the Ocean & Climate Platform and Salesforce, to be discovered here.
From the mitigation benefits of seagrass, to the coastal protection value of coral reefs, well-designed NbS are cost-effective solutions [6] [7] that can be used as a lever to expand climate action, financing and policy. The analysis suggests that countries are becoming increasingly aware of this potential, and are choosing to create the enabling conditions for action (e.g. financial support, enhanced capacity-building, investments in research) to support the implementation of effective NbS in their updated NDCs. Similarly, countries are gradually adding quantitative targets to set up and support concrete on-the-ground actions.
2021 and beyond: Maintaining efforts to further include coastal and marine ecosystems in NDCs
Today marks the beginning of UNFCCC COP26, and our hope is that the ocean’s critical contributions to climate mitigation and adaptation will be integral to COP considerations in Glasgow, and that the conference’s outcomes will further include enhanced national commitments and resources to meet ocean-climate challenges. As recalled by Peter Thomson, “what the ocean gives, it can take away” [8], and countries must continue their efforts to further integrate coastal and marine ecosystems in their NDCs, so that the ocean can maintain its role as climate regulator.
In line with the ambition loop, this report aims to contribute to the exercise of stocktaking (i.e. starting officially at UNFCCC COP26) to inform the second revision cycle of NDCs and support related national climate commitments. The international political agenda indeed provides multiple options to “ratchet up”. In this perspective, the first Global Stocktake (2023) will provide a global checkpoint between the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement and the short-term climate actions and commitments presented in NDCs [9]. It will be an important step ahead of the second NDC revision cycle (2025) for countries to further include and strengthen their commitments to marine and coastal NbS in their national climate strategies.
[1] This report follows a three-step publication process: (1) the provisional draft published after the UNFCCC inter-sessions (June 2021), which reviewed new or updated NDCs submitted until 8 June 2021; (2) the present and interim draft being published at UNFCCC COP26 (November 2021), which contains a review of new or updated NDCs submitted by 21 October 2021, and a comparative analysis of first and updated NDCs; and (3) the final report that will include all new or updated NDCs submitted as part of the first NDC revision cycle.
[2] Fransen, T., et al. (2019), Enhancing NDCs: A Guide to Strengthening National Climate Plans by 2020, Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. available at: https://www.ndcs.undp.org/content/ndc-support-programme/en/home/impact-and-learning/library/ndc-enhancement-guide0.html
[3] Nature-based Solutions in coastal and marine ecosystems (coastal and marine NbS) are actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore coastal and marine ecosystems in ways that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively. Coastal and marine NbS are based on the ability of coastal and marine ecosystems to sequester CO2 (i.e., blue carbon ecosystems), and/or their ability to foster adaptation and resilience of communities and ecosystems, by acting as buffers against climate change impacts while improving livelihoods.
[4] A country is considered to have increased its ambition when it added new coastal and marine NbS, i.e. when it included coastal and marine NbS as part of their mitigation and/or adaptation measures in updated NDCs, but did not include it in INDC or first NDC.
[5] As of 21 October 2021, the comparative analysis covers the 112 countries and the EU-27, hereafter 113 countries, that have submitted both their first and updated NDCs (i.e., in total 139 countries).
[6] Narayan, et al. 2016: Narayan S, Beck MW, Reguero BG, Losada IJ, van Wesenbeeck B, Pontee N, et al. (2016) The Effectiveness, Costs and Coastal Protection Benefits of Natural and Nature-Based Defences. PLoS ONE 11(5): e0154735. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154735
[7] Seddon N, et al. (2020). Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 375: 20190120. available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0120
[8] Open letter by Peter Thomson, UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, to Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, available at: https://ocean.economist.com/governance/articles/cop26-and-the-ocean-climate-nexus
[9] Schindler Murray, L., Romero, V. and Herr, D. (2021): Unpacking the UNFCCC Global Stocktake for Ocean-Climate Action. IUCN, Rare, Conservation International, WWF, and Ocean & Climate Platform. available at: https://www.iucn.org/news/marine-and-polar/202105/ocean-and-unfccc-global-stocktake-what-does-mean