Guidance for NAMA Design - Building on Country Experiences
Nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) represent a valuable opportunity for developing countries to remain true to their sustainable development priorities and needs while simultaneously working to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many countries are already taking steps to use NAMAs as instruments for contributing to the global mitigation agenda and as a means of leveraging national and international financial support for more effective and transformational climate actions. A newly launched joint publication is poised to add to the quickly-growing literature on this emerging topic, and is doing so through a truly concerted approach.
Although broadly defined, many developing countries are already establishing an experience base. It is within this context that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Low Emission Capacity Building (LECB) Programme (supported through funding from the European Commission and the Governments of Germany and Australia), in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, launched the new publication Guidance for NAMA Design: Building on Country Experiences in order to capture and distill these important and timely lessons learned.
The Guidance for NAMA Design uses the knowledge pool collected through extensive collaboration to offer readers an overview of the NAMA landscape and puts forth practical advice arising from first-hand experience from around the globe.
The guidance, first launched at the nineteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 19) to the UNFCCC in Warsaw, does not attempt to prescribe a linear path for NAMA development. Rather, it emphasises the iterative nature of this development, a process that encompasses learning from past experience, involves a wide range of stakeholders, capitalises on lessons learned, establishes or adapts policy frameworks, and includes the necessary means for establishing the institutional, financial and monitoring components that comprise a solid NAMA.
The Guidance for NAMA Design includes findings from relevant work taking place in numerous countries initiating mitigation actions and emphasises:
- how to structure NAMA financing;
- how to prioritise and develop NAMAs; and
- how best to establish supportive financial and measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) frameworks as well as institutions to facilitate NAMA development and implementation.
In line with its collaborative composition process and the constantly maturing landscape of innovative mitigation actions, the Guidance for NAMA Design is intended to remain a ‘living document’ – regularly updated and expanded through user feedback – as the experiences multiply and the field grows.