Building the Capacity of Selected sub-Sahara African Countries to Effectively Measure Progress in their Nationally Determined Contributions’ Implementation Using Tracking Tools and Indexes
Project Duration: 2022 – 2025
Grantor: African Development Bank Group (AfDB)
Principal Investigator: Dr Nicholas Ozor
Contact Email: executivedirector@atpsnet.org
Co-PIs: Dr. Mithika Mwenda (PACJA) and Prof. Chidi Magnus Onuoha (WAGEDI)
Grant Amount: USD 433,730.50
Project Description/Background
Numerous attempts have been made globally to regulate climate-induced challenges through mitigation and adaptation measures. The three most potent Conventions, Protocols, and Agreements that come into mind include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1994, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, and the Paris Agreement of 2015. From the Rio summit of 1992 to the Paris Agreement in the Conference of Parties (COP) 21, they all aim at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the coming into force of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty based on the Party’s voluntary submissions was seen as a major milestone towards bringing years of near deadlock negotiations to a conclusion and progressive global responsibility by all aimed at combating the rising GHGs. The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), with conditional and unconditional commitments, are key by-product of the Agreement and require all the countries to spell out their intended actions to address climate change over 5-year periods in terms of adaptation, mitigation, and means of implementation as well as opportunities arising therefrom and sustainable development co-benefits for the continent. Despite the Paris Agreement providing little guidance on what and how climate change adaptation would be included in the NDCs, most African NDCs highlight a number of cross-cutting strategies to address their mitigation ambitions as well as their adaptation needs. This is purblind considering the continent is already dealing with increased severity and frequency of climate risks and hazards due to its geographical positioning, overreliance on climate-sensitive production sectors such as agriculture, tourism, resource, and infrastructure deficit, and the limited adaptive capacity of the people.
It is against this background that the ATPS and its partners, in 2019, developed and piloted an NDC implementation monitoring, tracking tools, and index to gauge the status of NDC implementation in countries against the targets indicated in their submitted NDCs. This was measured across the five (5) NDC components [Governance, Finance, Mitigation, Adaptation and Measurement, Reporting & Verification (MRV)] as depicted in the monitoring tool and Index. The Index will indicate areas among the components where each country is performing well and where they are not performing well, hence, enabling policy decisions to improve in areas where performance is low. Moreover, the Index promotes comparability among countries/regions which can spur healthy competition to improve country/regional compliance based on the Index results. This project, therefore, seeks to utilize the key product from this pilot study (monitoring and tracking tools) already developed and validated in eight (8) African countries to build the capacity of focal persons/champions in twelve (12) selected SSA countries to effectively measure their NDCs implementation progress using the tracking tools and Indexes.
Key objectives and activities
- Identify and train strategic NDCs implementation champions/ focal persons in sixteen selected SSA countries;
- Work with the trained champions/ focal persons to deploy the NDC tracking and monitoring tools and generate indexes for the target countries; and
- Promote and advocate for the use of the NDC implementation tracking tools and index for decision-making and in fostering compliance with the Paris Agreement in SSA.
Expected outputs and deliverables
- Increased capacity of countries to collect and utilize the NDC data, using tracking tools and indexes to make informed policy and programmatic decisions.
- Progressive increased ambitions and compliance to the Paris Agreement and achievement of the NDC targets brought about by increased buy-in and strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders in SSA countries.
Expected outputs and deliverables
- Stakeholder mapping and analysis report
- A training manual for Trainers of Trainers
- Workshop reports
- NDC data for the participating countries
- Proceedings report
- Policy Brief
- Research papers
- Online hosted NDC index
Project Outputs