Deep Decarbonization Pathways in Latin America

Background and issues

The Paris Agreement creates an international framework for the world to tackle climate change, which is anchored on three key principles on the mitigation side:

• the collective well below 2C temperature goal (Art 2.1) which requires notably to move towards global emission neutrality in the second half of this century. (Art 4.1)
• a bottom-up paradigm, in which Parties are responsible to submit their own targets (their Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs) and measures (Art. 4.2)
• precise rules for regular, predictable and coordinated revision of NDCs every five years Art 4.9) under a ratcheting mechanism for ambition (Art. 4.3)

Paris Agreement Article 4.19 further encourages all parties to formulate and communicate long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies mindful of Article 2. This provision recognizes that, without a long-term plan, countries are at risk of choosing solutions that address development goals or NDCs at lowest cost, but that may lock in higher emissions in the long term. It also acknowledges that the more countries understand how to deeply decarbonize while still achieving their socioeconomic goals, the more they are enabled to increase the ambition of their mitigation targets over time. Given that all countries are diverse from an economic, geographic and social perspective, individual countries should as much as possible rely on in-country capacities to chart their own path towards prosperity and emission reductions, reflecting their various national aspirations and objectives. This process should provide governments with choices and options that protect and enhance development gains while fully exploiting the opportunities of job creation, technological innovation, attracting investments as well as avoiding pitfalls like investments into potential stranded infrastructure.

Objectives

There is a crucial need forcapacity building in developing countries to enable the development of long term low emissions development strategies suited to meet all the above stated objectives. This capacity building objective should primarily aim at equipping in- country teams with specific tools and methodologies for the elaboration of country-driven 2050 pathways suited to inform the articulation between global climate goals and the relevant sets of country circumstances, including development priorities. 

Based on these expanded capacities, the secondary objective should be to initiate and facilitate exchange of knowledge between researchers and decision makers in countries, in order to support the internalization of the conclusions of long-term analysis into short-term policy, including in revised NDCs. 

The DDPP-LAC project pursues these two intertwined objectives by building on the methodological lessons learnt in the IDDRI-led Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project and on the in-country engagement capacity supported by IDB. The DDPP-LAC project aims to implement both aspects of capacity building by putting more emphasis on the model development itself (through peer training involving the direct participation of modelling experts working in close collaboration with each national team) and still pursuing the support to scenario design built directly from the experience of DDPP phase 1. 

— Kickoff meeting of the project : Bogota, on 8- 9 Feb 2018 —