Moving ahead with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) for the transport sector in Asia

After reaching the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the focus has shifted to the signing, ratification and implementation of the agreement.

Key to its effective implementation are the national climate action plans, or the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), that were submitted by countries ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference last December. In the coming years, countries will need to identify and implement specific action plans in order to achieve the objectives specified in their NDCs. To do so, they will need to ensure that a national policy framework is in place to provide solid grounds for sustained implementation and continued action into the future. Mechanisms such as the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) are designed to turn the NDC climate change ambitions and the national policy development framework into specific sets of Mitigation Actions and Enabling Activities that can effectively allow each country to transition to a low-carbon and resilient development pathway.

The consortium of Grütter Consulting and South Pole Group is currently helping the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to strengthen the capacity of ADB's Developing Member Countries (DMCs) with the identification, development and implementation of transport NAMAs.

The scope of work will focus on providing technical assistance and support to DMCs on ways to develop a NAMA - from early identification and selection, to detailed design, and eventually financing and implementation. In particular, the mandate will identify the most practical ways to facilitate access to carbon finance, other innovative financing mechanisms, and traditional sources of finance (such as loans and grants) for transport NAMAs in ADB's DMCs. The identification and selection process will decide on which two NAMAs will be approved for further development and the selected NAMAs will then be further developed into complete NAMA Design Documents. The complete NAMA Design Documents will be included in UNFCCC's NAMA Registry so that future financing can be sought for their implementation.

"There is currently a limited capacity and understanding of the technical and financial aspects that underline the development of national, sector-wide scaled-up mitigation instruments such as NAMAs. This holds true especially for most developing countries who want to effectively operationalise their NDCs into successful implementation pathways that will ensure they achieve (or even go beyond) their GHG emission reduction and sustainable development targets," underlines Manuel Cocco, Principal, Climate Policy, South Pole Group. "The combined experience of Grutter Consulting and South Pole Group on advising governmental, private sector and civil society organisations on sustainable transport in the context of the existing and available climate policy instruments around the world allow us to provide very specific guidance and international best practices to ADB's DMCs. This in turn will increase the chances that future transport NAMAs developed in the region will be of sufficient quality and will get funded. This is ultimately the reason why we work in this field: to contribute, even if in a small part, to making the world a more sustainable place to live in."

The next steps of the project will involve a training workshop on transport NAMAs during ADB's transport week in September; a number of scoping and NAMA design meetings in the selected countries , and the final design of the 2 selected transport NAMAs.

NAMAs have played a major role in building capacity to identify, develop, implement and monitor actions related to low emissions development. Going forward with the Paris Agreement, several countries have explicitly referred to NAMAs as their favorite climate policy implementation framework, and they have prepared (primarily in the energy and transport sectors) and say their implementation would represent the first steps towards low emissions development.