To put the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement into practice, countries are expected to prepare ‘long-term, low greenhouse gas emission development strategies’ by 2020. These will be visionary plans for achieving low-carbon climate-resilient societies by 2050. While there is general understanding of why countries should formulate these long-term plans, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have peculiar hurdles to overcome — and exclusive rewards worth pursuing — in preparing their strategies. While highlighting common challenges and concerns, this briefing, Harnessing Long-Term Strategies for Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient LDC Development, makes the case for why LDCs in particular should prepare their long-term strategies early. It also discusses incentives to support and rationalise doing so ahead of 2020.
The 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are the only country grouping to have a dedicated article in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Green growth initiatives to date have often placed the economy and environment front and centre. However, for green growth to fulfil its promise, it needs to also focus on people and address systemic causes of poverty and social exclusion.
The working paper Delivering real change: getting international climate finance to the local level explores the flows of climate finance within the main international climate funds, to understand how effective they are in getting finance to the local level and what design features enable