Past editions
History
The Global NDC Conference, as we know it today, was preceded by the conferences on INDC preparation of 2014 (Berlin) and 2015 (Brussels). As the Paris Agreement was negotiated and adopted, and INDCs submitted by countries became NDCs, the Global NDC Conference remained a space for exchange and coordination.
Two meetings in 2017 and 2019 have gathered more than 600 participants from 80 countries. Learn about the previous editions of the Global NDC Conference:
2017: 3-5 May 2017, Berlin
In 2017, the Global NDC Conference gathered more than 250 participants from 80 countries, representing national governments, subnational actors, research institutions, think tanks, as well as international and bilateral organisations.
The three-day event was the perfect occasion for participants to share their perspectives and experiences in the fields of integrated governance, finance, and transparency for delivering climate goals. For further details, check out the 2017 Agenda.
Key messages in 2017 included:
- For climate actions to result in tangible development benefits, countries need to reconfigure their governance systems to foster an inclusive, integrated approach to low carbon development.
- The Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) is the backbone of the Paris Agreement. It builds trust, enables tracking of NDC implementation and informs the global stock take on reaching the long-term goal.
- Attracting investment in support of NDC ambitions is a multidimensional challenge in which the public sector plays a key role through policy, regulatory and financial incentives and engineering which enable public and private investment in low-carbon infrastructure and climate and resilient development.
Learn more about the conference’s key findings in 2017.
The Global NDC Conference 2017 was a joint effort then hosted by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) at the then German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), organised by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the then Low Emissions Development Strategies Global Partnership (LEDS GP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in cooperation with the NDC Partnership.
For more details check out the Global NDC Conference Report 2017.
2019: 12-14 June 2019, Berlin
In 2019, the Global NDC Conference aimed to inspire and enable policymakers and practitioners to accelerate the pace and scale of transformational change through NDC implementation to reach the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.
The Global NDC Conference 2019 convened 390 participants coming from 80 countries—working in government, development cooperation agencies, businesses, science, and civil society—to discuss the technical aspects of NDC implementation. More than 40 breakout sessions provided practice-oriented discussions and new insights on NDC implementation and updating, based on in-country examples and tools that have the potential to be scaled up.
Conference discussions were clustered around the themes of transparency, integrated governance, and finance—including cross cutting topics such as gender and social inclusion, leadership, and private sector engagement. While in technical rather than political nature, key messages in 2019 included:
- The science from the IPCC is clear: to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C and achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, emissions must peak well before 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. To do so, leaders must adopt a long-term vision for phasing out emissions by 2050 and, on that basis, set mid-term targets, for which NDCs provide a main avenue.
- Climate action should be designed to meet different people’s different needs. Women, indigenous people, ethnic minorities, and other socially excluded groups are powerful agents of change and already play important roles in core sectors affected by climate change (such as energy, agriculture, water, forestry).
- In tackling climate change, everyone is a stakeholder, and everyone is qualified to lead and speak out for higher climate ambition. To enable NDC implementation and raised ambition, we need a form of leadership that is more systemic, distributed, collaborative, reflective and in touch with the needs of the world around us.
- Committed international public finance is insufficient to meet the scale of the need. Private financial flows to climate adaptation and mitigation activities must increase many times over. Diverse private sector actors play a key role in delivering the Paris goals. They can contribute expertise, entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership to this end.
- Transparency enables enhanced ambition and transformational change, and development of long-term strategies towards net zero greenhouse gas emission economies. With the adoption of the Katowice rulebook, most rules are clear. Now is the time to implement them. The joint task is to translate the rules for decision-makers in national ministries such as planning and finance, for donors and for international implementing organisations.
- All finance impacts climate change and all finance must be aligned with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Too often fiscal policies pull against climate protection. All national and international spending and all infrastructure investments need to be aligned with climate and with sustainable development objectives to avoid a carbon lock-in. International climate finance remains essential, and should be predictable and accessible for developing countries, not only at national level but also at the local level.
Learn more about the conference’s key findings in 2019.
The Global NDC Conference 2019 was joint effort by leading initiatives. It was made possible with the support of many donors and partners. To mention a few, the conference was hosted by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) at the then German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) and included contributions by German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Main organisers comprised the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH through the programmes “NDC Assist” and “Support Project for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement (SPA)”; the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through its NDC Support Programme; and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). Main findings contributed to the work of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT); the then Low Emissions Development Strategies Global Partnership (LEDS GP); the NDC Partnership; and initiatives hosted at GIZ, such as the IKI NDC Support Cluster and the Partnership on Transparency in the Paris Agreement (PATPA).
For more details check out the Global NDC Conference 2019 Synthesis Paper.
