For many stakeholders working on climate mitigation, the emerging concept of NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) remains an enigma. Carbon Market Watch’s upcoming webinar “What are NAMAs and how can civil society organisations benefit from them?” aims to open the door to the many unanswered questions on how NAMAs work and what is the role of public participation in order to empower civil society to contribute and gain from the process.
The webinar is aimed at civil society organizations who want to learn about NAMAs and/or get involved in the process of NAMA development. Its purpose will be to build understanding of the functioning of NAMAs and the significance of public participation for accountability of NAMA actions. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the cases of NAMAs on the ground and how the involvement of civil society can build their capacity and lead to wide range of co-benefits.
Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) are a mitigation instrument for developing countries to take part in global efforts towards a long-term sustainable strategy for cutting emissions.
NAMAs exhibit a great potential as they move away from traditional offsetting and focus on developing countries’ own contribution to global mitigation and sustainable development. They provide a good opportunity for sector-wide and sub-sector policy based emission reductions. Despite their potentially high prospects to deliver mitigation and sustainability benefits, only 11 NAMAs are currently being implemented and 140 NAMAs are still at the design phase.
Effective stakeholder engagement is widely recognized as a key success factor for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). In this event, experts from the civil society, business and the NAMA facility will discuss the role of civil society in development and implementation of NAMAs and share experiences and best practices.
Leveraging climate finance for implementing Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) has been one of the biggest challenges for NAMA developers in the past years. A new financial package up to €85 million by the NAMA Facility invites NAMA support project outlines by 15 July 2015 and beefs up existing NAMA finance to about €150 million.
The NAMA project in Georgia is a good example of strengthening civil society involvement and embracing a gender sensitive approach to tackle the challenges of rural energy poverty, unsustainable logging and CO2 emissions.
On December 11, as part of the People’s Summit in Lima, Peru, Carbon Market Watch organized an event about Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). At the occasion of this event, experts from Carbon Market Watch, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the Greens Movement of Georgia and Friends of the Earth Georgia discussed this new policy instrument and the role of civil society in its design and implementation.
Carbon Market Watch welcomes the opportunity to provide input on discussions on specific possible additional land use, land-use change and forestry activities and specific alternative approaches to addressing the risk of non-permanence under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Proposals to include forests and land use activities in existing and new carbon markets will be discussed in Lima. But sequestration of carbon in land cannot compensate for continued fossil fuel emissions – fossil fuel emissions are permanent, whereas storing carbon in forests and soils is temporary and can be easily reversed by cutting down trees and ploughing fields.
