Long-term strategies in a changing climate

The 2015 Paris Agreement agreed the goal of limiting temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit to 1.5°C’. In line with this goal, the Agreement also called on all Parties to ‘formulate and communicate long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS)’. These long-term strategies typically extend out to the year 2050. As of early 2019, eleven Parties had communicated their LT-LEDS to the UNFCCC. However, the Paris Agreement also agreed a global goal for adaptation and this raises the question of how to integrate adaptation goals into LT-LEDS, i.e. so that they are climate resilient. Alongside this, a recent UNFCCC paper on long-term adaptation planning has set out the role for national adaptation plans as the main vehicle for adaptation planning in the decades to come, while maintaining synergy with Paris goals. This raises a similar question, i.e. how to ensure that long-term adaptation plans align with emission reduction. Finally, as mitigation and adaptation are both moving to a long-term perspective, an emerging question is whether to move to combined, synergistic climate resilient and low carbon long-term strategies.

Against this background, the IKI Support Project for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement (SPA), funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and implemented by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, has commissioned this research review to investigate and stimulate discussion on the technical and political economy issues with long-term climate resilient and low emission development strategies. This research report summarizes the findings and sets out some initial recommendations and future priorities.