The Nationally Determined Contribution Expert Tool (NEXT)

The Nationally Determined Contribution Expert Tool (NEXT) is a greenhouse gas accounting tool developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support annual environmental impact assessment for the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector.

NEXT provides a 30-year time-series of annual and cumulated estimates of carbon removal and greenhouse gas emissions reductions from climate actions made by Parties to the Paris Agreement. It was developed using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methodologies, and estimates can be made using the IPCC 2006 guidelines (IPCC 2006) or the IPCC 2019 refinement to the IPCC 2006 (IPCC 2019) which are both complemented by the IPCC 2013 wetlands supplement (IPCC 2013).

The tool was designed to provide results that directly respond to the provisions of the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework. It supports the tracking of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) as required by the modalities procedures and guidelines (MPGs).

NEXT provides a high temporal series of results and a wide set of indicators, including the social value of carbon. This makes it possible to have a comprehensive environmental and economic overview of climate actions in achieving a mitigation target.

Finally, the tool helps countries interpret, track and scale up ambition of their NDCs and this could ultimately feed into, and inform, the global stocktake of the Paris Agreement in a harmonized way.