Vietnam and Cambodia: Leveraging Support to Enhance Climate Ambition

In a new jointly written column, Cambodia’s Minister of Environment Say Samal and Vietnam’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Trần Hồng Hà highlight how each of their respective countries are leveraging support from the NDC Partnership’s Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) to enhance the quality, increase the ambition, and more effectively implement their NDCs.

In Vietnam, for example, the Ministers write:

To meet our current and future challenges, Vietnam’s updated NDC identifies economy-wide mitigation measures for the period 2021-2030, spanning the energy, agriculture, waste, land use, land use change and forestry, and industrial sectors. The plan is distinct because it tackles greenhouse gas emissions by optimizing industrial processes and increasing our unconditional emission reduction target to nine percent below by 2030, combined with a change in baseline, this results in a 34 percent drop in emissions compared to our previous target. Moreover, Vietnam’s conditional emissions reduction target is now 27 percent (250.8 million tCO2e)—52.6 million tons of CO2e more than the emissions target in our first NDC submitted in 2015.

And as for how Cambodia is taking action, they note:

Cambodia is responding to this challenge. We have committed to lowering emissions and our updated NDC will reflect improved mitigation targets and adaptation actions. Our commitments will focus on a wide array of sectors, including agriculture, forestry and other land uses, transport and health, among others. Cross-cutting issues such as gender, youth engagement, and private sector involvement will be hallmarks of our strategy. Finally, an analysis on how the NDC can impact SDG achievement is also being undertaken.

CAEP support delivered through the Partnership by UNDP and the World Bank has ensured that Cambodia’s NDC update is robust and consistent with prevailing commitments. Our climate plan is now informed by progress made on current NDC targets, and reflect commitments made in national and sectoral strategies adopted since the approval of our initial NDC in 2015. We will also conduct additional analyses, including with the latest emissions data, and prepare cost estimates for proposed sectoral NDC targets and actions.

Read the entire article at http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/11/vietnam-cambodia-leveraging-support-enhance-climate-ambition/.