Climate Strategies and Policies

Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, 30 years of complex, sometimes difficult, but oh so essential international climate negotiations! Much remains to be done, but we believe in the possibility of collective and concerted action and we are accompanying the countries of the South in this direction.

The stakes

The last (to pollute) will be the first (affected)! Developing countries, which have emitted fewer GHGs than industrialised countries, are already suffering the full impact of climate change and will suffer even more. The countries of the North, which carry the “climate debt”, are reluctant to invest in reducing their emissions and helping the countries of the South, particularly the least developed countries and the highly vulnerable small island states, to adapt… And yet: the cost of inaction is enormous: In its latest report (AR6, 2022), the IPCC estimates that spending on mitigation to stay below +2°C would range from 0.04% to 0.09% of GDP on average per year over the period 2020-2050 compared to a non-mitigation scenario…And the costs of climate damage related to inaction would range from 3% to 30% of global GDP in 2100, depending on the climate scenarios. For developing countries, encouraged to implement Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) in accordance with the Bali Action Plan in 2007, and then Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in accordance with the Paris Agreement in 2015, the challenge is to reconcile the fight against poverty, adaptation to climate change and control of their GHG emissions.

Our services

We have the expertise to conduct diagnostics in the AFOLU sector, at local or national level, in terms of mitigation (GHG emission/absorption profiles and possible mitigation options) and in terms of adaptation (current and future vulnerability to climate change and possible adaptation options). On this basis, taking into account global development objectives (e.g. poverty reduction and food security) and specific development objectives (e.g. sectoral policies on agriculture, forestry, livestock, etc.), we help local stakeholders to analyse and prioritise mitigation and adaptation actions (technical efficiency? cost/benefit? social acceptability? measurement-reporting-verification (MRV) modalities, etc.) and to transcribe them into strategic documents (NDCs, Biennial Update Reports, National Communication, sectoral policies, etc.). We are directly competent in the AFOLU sector, which is often highly emissive and vulnerable to climate change in the South, but we are also able to coordinate support for a climate strategy, which is cross-sectoral and complex by nature, by surrounding ourselves with mitigation and adaptation experts in the other sectors (energy, industry, transport, etc.).