UNDP Case Study

Case Study: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Case Study

Aligning the two objectives of climate and development represents a new challenge of how to assess and promote NAMAs sustainable development benefits. National development objectives provide the context for NAMAs and represent a key driver for mitigation actions. In contrast to traditional project-based mitigation actions, NAMAs focus on building a sustainable low-carbon structure in climate-relevant sectors

Who is the client?

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in more than 170 countries and territories, the UNDP offers a global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

What is the context?

The term 'Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action' (NAMA) refers to a set of policies and actions that countries undertake as part of a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A NAMA is an emerging mitigation instrument that seeks to bring together public and private players into a coordinated operational framework
and an overarching financial architecture in order to scale-up the most promising environmentally and economically effective mitigation actions. Therefore, measurement and reporting of sustainable development impacts is essential to ensuring the effectiveness of mitigation actions, as is a strong integrated approach to assess NAMA's contribution to sustainable development.

What was the challenge?

Aligning the two objectives of climate and development represents a new challenge of how to assess and promote
NAMAs sustainable development benefits. National development objectives provide the context for NAMAs and represent a key driver for mitigation actions. In contrast to traditional project-based mitigation actions, NAMAs focus on a paradigm shift by building a sustainable low-carbon structure in climate-relevant sectors.

The challenge was to create a simple but detailed tool that would be an add-on to all existing standards and tools. The new SD tool would detail in an elaborate manner all the sustainable development benefits, which is currently not possible when using existing tools or standards. The new SD tool also needed to capture the overlapping benefits falling into different domains in order to support project developers when adequately assigning sustainable development benefits.